


Creative Juices

by SandWitch42



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Gen, Monsters, School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 08:19:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16512689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandWitch42/pseuds/SandWitch42
Summary: Sam and Dean drive into a Southern summer to work a case dealing with multiple deaths that seem to have no connection to each other aside from all of them happening in a very short period of time. Each death is different from the last, and none are like anything they've ever seen before.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In my Sophomore year of high school, my Creative Writing teacher tasked each of us to create a character. Since that day, my character has been riding around like a little ball in the back of my head, oh so patiently waiting for her story to be told. Neither of us expected for it to happen this way, in my first ever piece of fan fiction. Nevertheless, I hope it is satisfactory for her. She's waited long enough.
> 
> This one's for you, Mr. Vines. Thank you for being an inspiration, even all these many years later. Would that I could have you read this and grade it.

 

_Two pairs of footsteps crunched along the gravel of a partially overgrown path. The walk from the road to the quarry wasn't far, but it was narrow and twisted, not accessible by vehicle. As the owners of the feet met with others already on the scene, two hands reached into the inner pockets of their suit jackets and produced folds of black leather which they flipped open to reveal a flash of metal and bold, blue letters. FBI. They introduced themselves as they both tucked the badges away._

_The pair moved as if twins, and though they shared some features, they stood in contrast of each other. For starters, one towered a good three inches taller than the other. The taller one also had longer hair, broader shoulders. The other, however, was harder and carried himself with a steeliness that hinted at burdens he never wanted to carry but would never put down._

_As they spoke with local law enforcement, they cast their eyes up to the half-rusted metal scaffolding that had been permanently drilled into the bedrock, here at the top of the quarry. Half of a human male dangled precariously from a railing up top. A t-shirt covered most of what was left, slapping wetly in a mocking breeze that didn't touch anyone down on the ground. It was almost black with blood, making the original color indiscernible. His face, neck, and arms were a shredded ruin, and everything below his ribs was in glopping pieces down along the scaffolding and splayed across the edge of the water that filled the depleted quarry._

_The newcomers finished their conversation and turned to leave. As they walked, the harder one warily eyed their surroundings, looking for -expecting- threats. The crunch of gravel under their feet faded as they moved away toward the road. The watcher waited until the pair had gone then drew further back into denser shadows of the underbrush that grew along the path and disappeared within them._

.oOo.

Dean shucked his suit jacket from his shoulders and loosened his tie before opening the driver side door of his beloved Impala. He stuffed the jacket into the back seat with a huff. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he squinted against the blazing sun sitting directly overhead to look across the roof of the black car at his brother.

"Are you sure the map didn't say 'Satan's Butthole'?" he griped. "It is freaking miserable here." He swiped a sleeve across his forehead, only serving to make room for the next wave of perspiration to pop out. Keys jingled in his hand as he threw himself into the seat irritably. Sam joined him, slipping smoothly into his side of the car. Dean grabbed the steering wheel, ready to jam the key in the ignition, and pulled his hand back with a hiss.

"Dammit, we weren't out there for twenty minutes, and it's a damn oven in here."

"Turn on the air conditioner," Sam directed. "We'll talk as it cools off, then we can get back to the hotel to do some research."

Dean was careful not to touch the wheel again as he turned the key, and the Impala's engine roared to life. He flicked the temperature to low and the fan on high. He was rewarded with a blast of hot air to their faces. He caught Sam's eye roll as they both hurried to stand outside the car as they waited, but he decided not to challenge it.

"So talk to me, Sam. What the hell did that back there?" Dean crossed one forearm over the other and leaned them on the edge of the roof, looking across again at the taller man.

The humidity was clamped around Sam as well. Sweat matted strands of hair to his forehead and down the sides of his face. Now standing back out in the heat, Sam followed Dean's lead of removing his suit jacket. The action shook loose several beads of sweat. They rolled down his face, some joining in with the wetness already sticking to his hair, others actually dropping from his chin. Dean watched those with a grimace, knowing his own face looked much the same.

"That's why I want to start researching. I have no idea what could have done that. The closest I've seen is when Dick Roman was using Biggerson's to feed people those turducken burgers. But even that wasn't anything close to what's out at that quarry." Sam lifted a hand to gesture vaguely behind him to the crime scene shielded by trees. His brow was furrowed, but that could have been in thought or from the sun shining in his eyes. "The grey-goo-crazed human monsters ate their victims. From what I could see out at the quarry, all the pieces were still there. Looking like it had been run through a wood chipper, but there. It was like whatever did it just tore that guy up for fun."

Dean let his eyes slide away from Sam's, losing focus on the outside world as he pondered Sam's words. He found himself wishing he could call Bobby. With a slight shake, he brought himself back. "Okay." He gave the roof of the car a pat. "She should be cooled off enough to not bake us alive. Let's go do some research."

.oOo.

"Nothing. I got nothing." Sam hunched in his seat and scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his palms, working away the strain of having stared at the screen of his laptop for over three hours straight. His head hurt. Dropping his hands, he looked to his brother, stretched comfortably out on one of the hotel beds, propped on one side, cradling his temple against his fist as the other hand flipped through Dad's journal. Sam sighed heavily as he lifted from his seat at the table and took the few steps to the mini fridge. He retrieved two water bottles, tossing one in Dean's direction. It landed on the bed and bounced into his hip, drawing Dean's eyes away from the journal. He picked up the bottle and proffered it back to Sam.

"Why isn't this a beer?"

"Because it's too hot for beer," Sam answered, opening his own bottle. "We're not used to it, and we need to hydrate if we want to stay upright." To suit his own words, Sam tipped his water bottle back, downing half of the contents in three long swallows. A hint of salt from his lip mingled with the freshness of the water. The air conditioner under the hotel window was on full blast. Both brothers had dried sweat crusted to their skin under their white cotton t-shirts; they had peeled out of their button down shirts and ties and hit the research as soon as they walked through the door, neglecting showers. He wiped the back of his hand across his dampened upper lip and looked back at his brother who grumbled under his breath and unscrewed the lid of his bottle. His eyes dipped back to the pages before him as he sipped. "Dean. You know there's nothing in there about this. You've read it front to back countless times now."

"Yeah." Dean answered gruffly, eyes still flicking across the words in the journal.

"Then why?" Sam's question caused Dean to snap the journal shut and push away from it, lifting himself to sitting on the edge of the bed. He drew deeply of the water before answering.

"At first, it was just something to do while I cooled off. I planned on just taking long enough to stop all the damn sweating, then I was gonna head out to find out what I could about the vic." Dean paused, looking down at the bottle he was rolling between his palms. "But there's something about those pages, Sammy. Something that draws me in. It's like... I want to be reminded of what's out there, even if it's not what we're hunting at the time." He looked up at his brother, something raw exposed in his eyes. "I know it's a distraction, that I should be focused on what we're facing..." He dropped his gaze to the water again and silenced whatever else he had been ready to say with another drink.

Sam lifted his bottle too, uncertain how to respond. He couldn't argue; he was guilty of the same. There was something about Dad's journal that pulled at him as well, that demanded he continue to read through it again and again despite having memorized almost all of it from years of studying the well worn pages. And maybe Dean was right. Maybe it was the desire to remind himself that focusing on one monster at a time could cost them dearly. He opened his mouth to share his thoughts when Dean's cell phone rang.

"Agent Stoker." Sam strained to hear the voice on the other end, but it was a muted buzz. "Yeah... ... ...Okay, we'll be right in." Dean ended the call. "Another body."

"Where?"

"That's the good news." Dean got to his feet and worked on donning his fed suit. Sam did the same as he listened. "This one wasn't turned into hamburger meat. They already have it at the morgue, which means no standing around outside."

"Dean, how is that good news? A second body in about twelve hours that was killed in a different way? What if it's not the same monster?" Sam watched as his brother studiously avoided looking down at the journal abandoned on the bed as he buttoned his shirt.

"Then we just remind ourselves there's more than one monster to look out for."

They finished readying themselves in silence. Clothed and armed, Dean started for the door. Sam stopped him, "Dean." He turned to see Sam pointing at the water bottle laying on the bed next to the journal. "Finish that." He barely hid a smile at Dean's huff, eye roll, and an expression that practically shouted,  _Yes, Mother._  But his older brother still grabbed the bottle and drained it.

"Happy?" Dean crushed the plastic between his hands and dropped it in the can beside the door. "Let's go."


	2. Chapter 2

A fist of wet heat crushed around Sam as he unfolded his long legs to exit his brother's car. He couldn't get over how unaccustomed he was to such a climate. Even the fires of Hell had been dry and peeling, but this? This was-

"I feel like I'm swimming in an armpit," Dean groaned as he closed his door. It protested with a squawk; Sam's echoed the noise. No matter how well Dean tended the car, it was, after all, a 1967, and she obviously felt her five decades of abuse in her bones. Sam allowed Dean's continued grumblings to wash over him, half heard, as they walked inside the building. "What kind of po-dunk town did we stumble across that the coroner's office is the next town over? And NO hotels in the zip code? Total crap." It was obvious the heat was making him grumpy; there was no force behind his words.

They approached the three story brick building, and Sam pulled open the glass door, ushering Dean in front of him and into the sigh of air conditioning. Dean immediately stopped complaining. Sam's lips pulled back into a tight half smile as he cut his eyes down to the top of his brother's head. Dean didn't notice. The two of them approached the reception desk in the foyer, pulling out their fake FBI badges.

"Good afternoon," Sam greeted the short, plump forty-something lady behind the desk. He flashed his badge in a practiced hand, his brother mirroring the action. "I'm Agent Shelley; this is my partner, Agent Stoker. We were called in to see a homicide victim brought in a little while ago."

The woman bounced to her feet. Bangs from her bottle-bleached hair the color of a dirty peach fell into her eyes, escaping from a clip wedged in front of a wide scrunchie holding back the rest her hair in what might have started the day as a neat pony tail, but so damaged, it frizzed out. She seemed unaware of her hands flying up to remove the clip from her hair and smoothing the bangs back in place as she spoke. It seemed a habit repeated several times daily. "Oh, yes of course. The coroner is expecting you." She directed them down the hall to the correct room. As they walked away, Sam felt her eyes on them. He glanced back, and sure enough, she was leaning her hands forward on the desk, watching their backsides around the corner of the hall as they walked away. She noticed Sam catching her in the act, and she flushed scarlet, eyes wide and embarrassed. She frumped herself back down into her rolling chair, disappearing from view.

The coroner sat on a stool a few feet away from a white-shrouded body, engrossed in the contents on his clipboard and tapping his pen absently on his shoulder when the brothers peered into the window through the door. Short-cropped black hair sat above thick, brown-framed glasses. Sam gave the window a gentle rap-rap-rap with his knuckle, causing the coroner to jump. His eyes flew to the door, and his expression rapidly changed from surprise to relief. He motioned for them to enter the room. "Come in, come in," he said as the door opened. "Am I glad to have extra eyes on this'un. It is worth sharing and that's the God's-honest truth."

Sam exchanged a look with his brother as the man's thick Southern accent washed over them. Were they going to skip the formalities of introductions and handshakes? The coroner was already peering back at his clipboard. "It's the damnedest thing, really. I've gotten bodies from all manner of deaths. Simple natural causes, gang violence, dog maulings, snake bites, but I ain't never seen nothing like this." Sam reached a hand for the top of the sheet covering the body then hesitated, "May I, Doctor...?" He gave a small tilt to his head as he drew out the sound of the R in an invitation for the coroner to fill in the blank.

"Oh! Brooks. Terrance Brooks. And yes, help yourself. That's why you're here, ain't it, Agents?" He finally set down his clipboard and joined Sam on one side of the table as Dean positioned himself on the other.

All eyes were on the figure before them as Sam grasped the edge of the sheet and flipped it back, revealing a second male victim to the waist. His face was pallid and grey with blood loss, the reason displayed blatantly on his chest. Two large puncture wounds stabbed into his pectoral muscles, each easily a full five inches in diameter. The skin surrounding the wounds blazed a dark pink laced with angry red welts and bubbled green-grey blisters.

"Urgh. That's nasty," murmured Dean on the opposite side of the table. "So what can you tell us, doc?"

Brooks pushed two fingers along the bridge of his nose to press at his glasses. "Well, I would say that cause of death is obvious. Gaping chest wounds tend to put a damper on the rest of your day, and they go all the way through. Barely, but there are exit wounds on his back, suggesting the weapon was tapered and probably curved, given the placement of them compared to the entrance. What's even more perplexing, though, are the burns. After stabbing a guy through the chest with... well, I don't know what, but it seems like overkill -pardon the pun- to throw nitric acid into the mix."

"Did you say 'nitric acid'?" Sam asked, still examining the ruined flesh in front of him.

"Indeed. Ran a couple tests just to be sure. I'd say without a doubt if he hadn't suffered from these giant holes in his chest, the acid certainly would've done him in." Brooks thumbed his chin thoughtfully, "Still, the whole play is bizarre."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if I didn't know any better, I'd say someone designed this to look like a giant spider bite. If you look at the trauma on the skin around the wounds, you can see both these holes happened at the same time, in and out, boop-boop, like a spider's fangs. And, well, lots of spiders will also inject venom that'll break down it's prey. Causes necrosis; eats the flesh right up. This acid definitely made more of a mess than venom would've, though."

Sam replaced the sheet over the chest and face of the victim.

.oOo.

Walking back out to the car, Dean repeated himself for the third time. "What. The. Hell." It wasn't even a question anymore; he knew Sam couldn't answer it. "Can we even pretend this was done by a person? I mean, if it had really been venom, we could definitely say it's in our wheel house, but acid? Nitric acid? That's a human weapon, not a monster. Until you take into account the windows in his chest. I don't know of any humans who can punch all the way through a body like that." His stomach grumbled as he opened his car door and winced from the wave of heat escaping. He took a deep breath and gingerly maneuvered his way around the steering wheel to start the engine and air conditioner before popping back up to his feet. "Can you eat after seeing that in there?"

Sam puffed out a slight breath from both nose and mouth, allowing himself a small grin. "Can you?"

.oOo.

_Deep violet eyes regarded the men as they conversed over the roof of their black car. They seemed less assured of themselves than they had earlier in the day. Something had shaken their confidence. They weren't scared, no. They did not seem the type to ever be truly afraid. Though everyone does fear something. It would not be well to be on the opposite end of what could cause fear in these two men._

_Something they had seen inside the building had wormed doubt into their minds. They both had their own ways of hiding it. The tall one lifted his chin slightly higher, squared his shoulders more. He was using his height to feel more powerful and in control of his situation. The hard one smiled -smiled! as they continued talking, though his eyes still held uncertainty. Did they see these things in each other?_

_The two men climbed inside of the car and closed the doors. They hadn't looked to the unkempt hedges growing in unsightly disarray along the edge of the parking lot, and even if they had, it was unlikely they would have noticed what was observing them._

.oOo.


	3. Chapter 3

One thing Dean disliked about working a job as a fake fed was the insultingly early hours. One thing he disliked even more was being called before his alarm went off because yet another body had been discovered. He had still been too far into sleep to want to listen to the officer on the other end of the line when he answered it. Instead, he had thrown the phone across the expanse between the beds at Sam who had snatched it up, listened quietly, then assured them he and his partner would be in as soon as they could.

Bleary-eyed, he braced one hand on the wall next to the mirror as leaned over the bathroom sink, messily brushing his teeth. It was too early to worry about little things like holding his lips together to keep the foamy lather of toothpaste contained. He lolled his tongue out of his mouth and brushed that too, effectively giving him the appearance of a rabid dog. After spitting in the sink, he ran cold water to rinse his toothbrush and face, splashing a mess across the counter. Sam would just have to deal with it. He scrubbed his wet hands through his hair, trying unsuccessfully to contain the unruly spikes into some semblance of a respectable order.

A large yawn creaked his jaws as he stumbled from the bathroom in his boxers and t-shirt and into the living area where Sam waited, long hair looking perfectly brushed -though Dean wasn't sure his little brother even owned one- and suit looking as though it had been freshly pressed just before he put it on. He was leaned over his laptop intently, one hand poised over the mouse pad, the other hand holding a cup of what smelled, from across the room, like gas station coffee. A second cup sat on the table, a curl of steam still rising from the tiny hole in the lid. Dean scooped the cup into his hand, removed the lid, and breathed in the sweet, sweet aroma of his impending caffeine buzz. He took a few careful sips before setting it back down to begin dressing. He was finally ready to talk.

"So, early bird fitness freak running in the park before the asscrack of dawn finds a  _pair_ of early bird fitness freaks who were presumably running together and are now a couple of lumps of charcoal. Once again, no witnesses. That about sum it up?"

"Almost, but no." Sam's eyes stayed on the laptop as he continued. "One of those lumps of charcoal actually survived the attack. His girlfriend's body shielded him from the source of the fire. It still messed him up pretty badly, but they've got him in stable condition at the hospital downtown. Finally, our first witness to any of this. That's why we're up so early, not for a corpse." Sam's words were all correct, but his attention wasn't on them. Dean was buttoning his shirt as he stepped in behind his brother to look down to see what on the screen that held him so raptly.

"You're trying to figure out what did it."

"Well, yeah. Of course I am." Sam turned to look up and over his shoulder, dark, grey-green eyes fixing on Dean's lighter green. "At some point, something has to give. We've got to recognize the work of one of these monsters for what it is so we can make this stop." The look of intensity in his little brother's eyes grew. "We're supposed to save people, Dean. And so far we have three dead bodies, one person in the hospital, and zero leads. I'm not okay with that."

Dean wasn't okay with it either. He scrubbed a hand down his mouth without another word and stepped away to finish dressing. Sam turned back to the screen, to the monster databank he had downloaded from Charlie. By the time Dean was fully dressed and mostly caffeinated, Sam closed his laptop.

"I have it narrowed down to a few possibilities," he announced as he stood. "Talking to this witness should give me the information I need to pick one."

.oOo.

"Tell me what you saw." Sam's voice was softer than Dean's, and it made him the easier of the pair for hospitalized witnesses to talk to. They had discovered this fact early on in their hunting and used it to their advantage often. So far with this guy, from what Dean could tell, it didn't seem to matter which of the brothers spoke, he was still freaked out over what had happened in the park that morning.

Tyler Cunningham, their burn victim, shook his head slightly in response to Sam, eyes tightening as just that barest of motions caused him pain despite the meds coursing through him from the IV. "It wasn't real. It couldn't have been."

"Tyler, what happened to you and Karen was real. The flames were real, and they came from somewhere," Sam urged more gently than Dean would have. "Tell me where."

"It was..." Tyler squeezed his eyes shut, tears leaking from the corners. His face had been spared any burn damage, and as the tears escaped, rolling down pale cheeks, his voice was a scratching whisper. "Baby Godzilla."

Dean had been leaning toward the bed to hear their witness better, but with that, he very slowly straightened up as much as he could until he was almost leaning back. He stiffly turned toward Sam, his expression hard. Sam's eyes were wide with confusion. Dean looked back at the burnt wreck on the bed with firm disbelief in his eyes. "Excuse me, what?" he asked gruffly.

"Baby Godzilla." Tyler opened his eyes again. He looked almost frantic now. "Baby -girl- Godzilla," he amended. "It was pink... and... about the size of a cat."

Dean threw his hands in the air in exasperation and stalked from the room. He didn't care whether Sam followed in that moment; he just had to get out of that room and away from the crazy. As he predicted, Sam stayed behind, probably smoothing things over like he does. Dean was aware of just how abrasive he could be, and though he never admitted it out loud, he knew he relied on Sam a little too often to be the salve when he rubbed people the wrong way. After a few minutes of annoyed pacing, he was joined by his brother. Dean opened his mouth, but whatever was on his face caused Sam to grab the back of his arm, just above the elbow, and propel him about ten more feet away from the hospital room door before letting him speak.

"Tell me you're not actually buying this crap," Dean's eyes flashed as he practically hissed the words. Sam sighed and released Dean's arm.

"I don't know what to believe," he confessed. "Obviously, there are no pink Godzilla creatures -of any size- in the monster databank. We're basically back to square one if we ignore his statement..."

The way Sam trailed off left an unspoken word. "But?" Dean prompted.

"We could go to the library. Find out if this is something new that we don't know about, something local. It wouldn't be the first time."

Dean jerked angrily. "Come on, man!" he snapped. "You don't honestly believe-"

"I already told you," Sam interrupted. "I don't know what to believe. But I do know that we can't just walk away from this. We have to look; we have to try." He sighed again as he turned away and headed further down the hall toward the elevator. Dean ran his hand down his face and watched his brother for a moment. He then shook his head and followed.

"At the very least, we're going back to the hotel first to ditch the suits," Dean stated as the elevator doors opened to admit them. Doing so would take them past the library, and they'd have to turn back around after they changed. Dean didn't care; he was ready for short sleeves. He looked up to see Sam nod.

.oOo.

The automatic doors of the library shushed closed behind them as Sam and Dean stepped away from the sensor. Sam's fingertips traveled through the dampness of his sweat-lined hair, pushing it away from his face to better allow the coolness of the air conditioning to touch his skin. He took in a slow, deep breath through his nose, discretely inhaling the aroma permeating one of his favorite places. All libraries had that same smell that he enjoyed, of ink and old paper, of dust on long-forgotten pages, of home. The last thought startled him a little. It smelled like all those incredible old books in the bunker, and until this moment, he didn't realize he had accepted the bunker as home. He spared a glance at Dean then jerked his eyes away again. Obviously his brother wouldn't be aware of his sudden revelation. No need to call attention to it.

Sam took a few minutes to familiarize himself with the layout of this particular library while Dean scouted for an empty table. After a visit to the card catalog -this place didn't even have an electronic system yet!, though there was something nostalgic about doing it the old fashioned way- Sam found his way to the correct section. He subconsciously ran his fingers across the spines of books on the row below where he was searching until his eyes picked out the title he sought. Only two books were cradled in his arms when he emerged from between the shelves to the common area. There were a mere six tables, and Dean had rejected those filled with grandparents reading to their preschoolers in favor of a table occupied by a lone, sandy-haired teenage boy.

Sam studied the boy as he set the pair of books on the table next to Dean. He didn't want to talk too openly about what he was researching in front of an innocent. But wait, Sam took in the fact there was an open backpack on the table next to him, and the boy was hunched over an open binder, writing. It was Thursday and not even lunch time yet. Shouldn't this kid be at school?

"This is all they have on local lore," he turned his attention and addressed Dean. "The town is just over two-hundred years old, but next to nothing happens here. It's like if it's not NASCAR or college football, nobody cares." Sam took a seat and flipped open one of the books, watching the boy out of the corner of his eye. So far, their presence didn't seem to register with him; he was completely absorbed in his writing. Sam tried to ignore him as well as he was ignoring them. He slid the second book in front of Dean. "You take this one. Let's see what we can learn about this place." As minutes ticked by, Sam thumbed through the pages of the book in front of him, but his eyes kept drifting back to the high school student -he had to be- sharing the table with them. Why was he such a distraction?

Suddenly, Sam realized it wasn't the boy at all that was distracting him. It was the symbol at the top of the paper he was so diligently writing on. " **Tulpa!** " he exclaimed. A sudden hush fell over the library as the murmured voices of people reading in whispers to the youngsters were cut off. Eyes swung to Sam, and even a harsh  _sshhh!_ came shooting across the room from a librarian behind the desk. Even the boy's focus finally came up off of his page to fix Sam with brown eyes.

"Do you mind?" he asked in a quiet yet stern voice. "I only have an hour here before I have to get back to school. I want to get this done today since it's due tomorrow."

"What are you working on?" Sam asked, the book in front of him forgotten.

"Designing a character. It's for my Creative Writing class." His pen tapped on the piece of thick, age-yellowed paper in front of him. "My teacher wants all of us to put our final drafts on this paper he passed out." Sam eyed the symbol emblazoned like letterhead at the top of the page.

"Do you know why?"

The boy shrugged. "I dunno, I guess 'cause it looks cool? Mr. Vino has always done things a little differently. That's why his Creative Writing class is so popular. Everybody likes him. I mean," he took in the shelves of books with a wave of his hand. "He lets us come over to the library during his class time."

Sam's brow furrowed over that. "Where's the school?"

"Oh, it's across the street," the boy pointed at the door and motioned left. "Through the grocery store parking lot, and it shares a property line with the back of the store. About a five minute walk if you're dragging your feet."

"And if we wanted to drive?" Dean finally joined the conversation, though he had been paying attention since Sam's shout. The boy gave very clear directions. Sam watched Dean mentally file the them away then stand up. He gathered the two books Sam had carried over and headed toward the book return. Sam lingered.

"What kind of character are you writing?" The boy flushed and looked down.

"It's stupid," he mumbled.

"Tell me," Sam insisted gently, showing the boy genuine interest.

"Well, he has telekinesis, but he can only use it if he says out loud exactly what he's doing. I'm writing him in three stages of his life: young, just figuring out he can move things; as an adult, realizing that it's not always practical to use it; and then as an old man, telling what he's learned. I know that sounds dumb, but-"

"No," Sam stopped him by placing his hand on the table between them. "It's not. I think your writing is... creative." He offered a smile to the boy who returned it.


	4. Chapter 4

"So what was that?" Dean asked as they exited the library into the midday heat. They crossed the lot to where Dean had found a spot to park in the shade of an oak tree. "You shouted about a tulpa right before getting Chatty Cathy with that kid. What did you see that I didn't?"

"The tulpa symbol. You remember what it does, right?"

"Yeah, it needs the belief from a shit ton of people to bring an idea into existence." They reached their respective sides of the car. Dean felt a trickle of sweat roll down his spine as he opened his door and got in, glad of the difference parking in the shade did for the inside temperature of the car. Sam answered as he ducked his height into the passenger seat. His hair was sticking to his face again.

"Maybe not a shit ton. The symbol was at the top of the paper that kid was writing on. He said his teacher gave a piece to everyone in the class to write the final drafts of their characters. Could be that the extreme focus it takes to develop a fully-realized character is enough to activate the symbol and bring said character to life. It's right there in front of them as they're pouring out their imaginations on paper. Writing takes work, Dean. And when you truly believe in what you're creating, there's a piece of you, a piece of life, that goes into it."

Dean shot a skeptical look at his brother just before easing the Impala out of the parking lot. "Since when are you a writer?"

"Shut up."

"Okay, so what you're telling me is Teacher handed out his tulpa stationary, and now we have an entire classroom -what, twenty kids?- writing up monsters that are going to leap off their pages and kill the whole damn town? I mean, it's small, so it won't take long."

Sam was quiet. Dean glanced at him and saw the lines across his forehead and the slight twitch of his jaw that showed he was thinking. His voice was soft, still partially lost in thought, "No. Not the entire class." He turned himself in his seat a little, facing Dean. "The kid at the library wasn't writing a monster. That wasn't the assignment. It was just 'a character.' It could be anything the kids want it to be. Some of them chose to create monsters, but the whole class wouldn't have."

Dean started to make a noise of agreement, but Sam's startled "Oh!" stopped him.

"What?" Dean tossed a worried look across the seat. "Sammy, what is it?"

"We're talking about this like it's just one class of kids. This teacher probably has multiple classes, all of them full of students with this paper in hand."

Dean gritted his teeth and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as he pulled off the road from their very short drive and into the school parking lot. He searched for a shady spot and found one at the far end away from the main entrance. He slammed the shifter into park, killed the engine, and climbed out.

.oOo.

_"Some of these kids have seriously screwed up imaginations. We need to make this stop. Now."_

_Whatever the tall one said in response was lost in the distance their hurried pace put between the two men and the stand of trees, the shade of which sheltered their car. They had a renewed vigor in their steps, the earlier uncertainty vanished with this newfound purpose, as though it had never been. Interesting. They made their way across the wavy heat of the parking lot and into the front of the school, their body language showing they were still having their discussion._

_The trees wrapped around more than half of the perimeter of the school. As the watcher ghosted soundlessly through the shadows offered by the dense foliage, there was a bit of hope that the men would end up in a building where they could still be seen through a window._

.oOo.

Just inside the school doors, a round officer in a black uniform sat in a plastic chair too narrow to comfortably hold his girth. His chins were tucked to his chest, nose pointed to the open book he held in his thick hands. He looked up as the cool air around him swirled and was sucked through the open front door, admitting a wave of heat to replace it. Dean appraised the man as the push handle of the door clicked shut behind him and Sam.

"Security guard at a high school?" Dean lifted an eyebrow. The guard rolled to his feet with a grunt, dropping his book on the vacated seat. He eyed the brothers with the same criticism he was receiving from Dean.

"You obviously ain't been to high school in a while. What with mass shootings, bomb threats, strangers..." he swept his eyes to Sam and back to Dean. "They like to keep someone on hand. Can I help you gentlemen?"

Dean and Sam, both in t-shirts and lacking their usual inside jacket pockets, both reached a hand behind themselves. The guard's hand flew to the pistol on his hip.

"Woah, Trigger," Dean's free hand stretched out in the space between them, palm out. "FBI. I'm just reaching for my badge." He turned his body slightly, granting the guard visual access to Dean's fingers dipping into the denim pocket. He withdrew the badge, lifting it for the guard's inspection. "Agent Stoker."

Satisfied, the guard turned to Sam who also now had his badge out. "Agent Shelley." The guard nodded at their introductions and relaxed his hand away from his still holstered gun.

"So you're the feds everybody's been gabbing about. Station's all abuzz about ya'll, working a case in our town, but ain't even been to our station." He waved a hand at them, turning companionable now that he had deemed them to not be a threat. "Can't say as I blame you. We ain't got no resources y'need." His grin faded. "But why're ya'll here at the school? You here for a suspect?" He asked the last in a hushed whisper, leaning in conspiratorially, inviting them to share what they knew.

Dean blinked, his face blank. He waited long enough for the guard to realize he would not be privy to the details of the investigation. The guard flushed and straightened, clearing his throat. "Well, uh," he cleared it again. "Ya'll need to check in at the main office. First door 'round the corner." Dejected, the guard retrieved his book and settled back into his plastic chair, the metal legs splaying slightly under his bulk. This time, Dean noted as he walked away, Sam didn't bother with sticking behind to ease hurt feelings before tailing behind him.

The guard had failed to specify which way, and at the junction, Dean looked both directions as though about to cross a street. Directly in front of them was a bank of windows stretching across the entire wall, broken only by a door letting out to a covered breezeway. To the right was a short hall and a step down leading to what appeared to be a gymnasium beyond propped-open double doors. To the left, opposite the outer windows, was a door flanked by a pair of smaller windows to show the interior of the main office. Dean rounded the corner, opened the door, and let himself and Sam into the office.

They showed their badges yet again, this time to the girl behind the desk. She was obviously a student, probably working as an office aide for a class credit. Her gleaming, tight black curls were cropped short, almost shaved, and a wide fabric headband, swirled with designs, covered part of her forehead and almost half the top of her head. Her brown eyes looked thoughtful at their words as the badges were tucked away again, as though it wasn't out of the ordinary for agents to be visiting the office on her watch. Dean could admire her professionalism at her young age. "One moment," the girl reached for the phone and pressed an inside line. "Principal Lindell? Yes ma'am, I'm sorry to interrupt, but there are two FBI agents here to speak with Mr. Vino. ... No ma'am, they didn't say. ... I'll ask." The girl covered the receiver with one hand, "Did you need to speak with the principal as well? She's sorry to not come out of her office otherwise, but she is conducting a web conference right now."

"That won't be necessary," Dean replied. The girl returned to her conversation.

"No ma'am, just Mr. Vino. ... Yes ma'am, I will. You're welcome." She hung up and fixed first Sam then Dean with her dark eyes. "Our office runner is absent today, so I'll be the one to escort you to Mr. Vino's classroom in about ten minutes. You came at a good time. His lunch break begins when this class period ends, but if I know Mr. Vino, he won't go to the teacher's lounge. If you'll have a seat?" The girl extended a slender hand to three chairs in a row against the wall next to a pinewood door labeled "Principal."

The brothers had no choice but to wait. They took their places in two of the chairs. Dean folded his arms across his chest, kicked one ankle over the opposite knee, and leaned against the back of the chair. Sam interlaced his fingers and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his spread knees, forehead creased, lost in thought. Dean snickered to himself, thinking Sam looked like he was a kid in trouble outside the principal's office, worried that his parents would be called. He grimaced. Well, that thought had turned sour quickly.

He turned his attention to the office aide. She busied herself between the computer, the heavy duty printer/copier, and the outbox at the desk. Whatever her job happened to be, she was doing it diligently. Ten minutes passed in relative silence aside from the girl buzzing around the office. A shrill ringing of a bell cried through the intercom system of the school. Dean flinched and looked at Sam. The sound had pulled him out of his inner thoughts. They both looked to the aide who smiled as she came around the desk, "It would be in your best interest to wait a few minutes for the sea to calm." Her eyes went to one of the small windows next to the door. Their eyes followed. They watched through that window and out the wall of windows across the hall as doors from the various buildings in the school yard opened and released waves of students changing classes. Some of them beelined to the main building, heading toward the Cafeteria, others started the trek up the hill, still others streamed past the office to the gym.

In a remarkably short amount of time, the flow of teenagers found their destinations, and while the last few stragglers loped along, seemingly in no hurry to make their next classes on time, the aide slipped past the brothers and left the office, holding the door open for them. "If you'll follow me?" Once the door was closed securely behind them, she used one of a handful of keys hanging from a retractable pulley on her hip to lock it. Another bell rang through the intercom as she turned away from the locked knob.

As the girl led them across to the door among the wall of windows and outside, she gave a cursory tour by pointing in this direction or that to identify the cluster of buildings that made up the school grounds. Music, Arts, and Physical Education in the wing connected to the main building; Social Sciences and Mathematics up the hill in that building; Library other there; yet another for Sciences and Computer classes. The Cafeteria was part of the main building too, and as they walked along the breezeway past it, Dean observed the bank of windows that stretched all the way along that wall as well. He hitched his shoulders slightly. Killer Creative Writing monsters on the loose, and the mass of teenagers seemed so... vulnerable with an entire wall of windows exposing them to whatever might come next. The girl took them into the building nearest the main, explaining it held classes predominately for English and Foreign Languages. She delivered them to a classroom door and knocked, opening it without waiting for a response, and poked her head in. "Mr. Vino? Visitors." She turned back to the brothers. "Please check back in at the office before you leave." She smiled pleasantly and took herself back the way they had come.

"Is it just me, or was she more professional than most of the people we've worked with so far?" Sam's words were an echo of Dean's thoughts.

"Kid's going places," Dean replied and pressed the door the girl had left ajar fully open, revealing the classroom to himself and Sam. An average-sized man sat behind his desk with an open, yet untouched, salad. He stood as the brothers walked into the room. He was bald on top, a ring of salt-and-pepper hair encircling the back of his head. Thin, silver wire-rimmed glasses perched across the bridge of his nose, sitting before blue eyes. He had a full beard and mustache the same color as his hair, and like his hair, it was trimmed short. A shirt and tie hid under an olive sweater vest.

"Gentlemen," the teacher greeted politely. "My visitors typically tend toward old students of mine, but you clearly aren't. To what do I owe this meeting?"

Badges flashed; introductions were made. "James Vino," he extended a hand to each of them in turn.

"Vino," Dean repeated with an amused grin as he took his turn shaking hands. "Like wine." The teacher adapted a long-suffering expression of someone who had heard a joke far too many times.

"Yes. Every year there's that one student who thinks he's funny and calls me Mr. Wine." Dean's grin faltered and he jammed his hands into his pockets, flicking his eyes around the room to find something other than the teacher's stern face. Why did he suddenly feel like he was fourteen?

"How many years have you been teaching here, Mr. Vino?" Sam drew attention to himself and away from Dean.

"Here, only two years."

"You taught somewhere else previously?" Sam smoothly led the conversation away from Dean's failed attempt at humor. Screw them; he was hilarious. As Sam got Mr. Vino to talk, Dean made his way over to yet another line of windows dominating the wall opposite the door. What was with this place and windows? Directly under the windows was a built-in shelf and cabinets. The top of the shelf was lined with magazine racks, repurposed to hold folders labeled with what Dean assumed were students' names. There were quite a few, enough for several classes worth. He leaned a hand against a window and used the other to slide a folder out and flip it open to peruse the writing.

 

_The trees encircling the school grounds were several yards away from the window where the watcher spotted the hard one, and details were difficult to make out. Bright sunlight made reflections of the outside world the prominent display upon the glass, but when he moved close to the window and pressed his hand against the glass, he was visible. A gentle breeze ruffled leaves and pushed a fall of electric blue hair across violet eyes. Clawed fingers swiped the locks away. Thin lips curled into a smile across daintily pointed teeth at an almost imperceptible motion of the hard one's hand as his eyes gave the impression his attention was elsewhere. Oh, he was clever._

 

"How many Creative Writing classes do you teach in a day, Mr. Vino?" Dean's question pulled Sam's attention from the teacher to his brother, and he watched as Dean filed away the folder he had been flipping through and turned from the window. His brother's gaze scanned everything on the top of the shelf once more before settling into eye contact with the teacher. It was Sam's turn to examine the classroom.

"Just the one, actually. For the rest of the day, I teach ninth grade English. Though, truth be told, Creative Writing is my favorite class of the day."

"Why is that?" Dean leaned his hips against the shelf, stuffing his fingers up to the middle knuckle in his front pockets, his easy posture drawing Mr. Vino toward him while Sam drifted to a book shelf near the desk.

Mr. Vino laughed humorlessly. "There are only so many book reports one can read on 'To Kill A Mockingbird' before one wants to kill himself." Sam smirked silently, listening to Dean's strained laughter. He was fairly certain Dean had never actually read the classic, let alone done a book report on it. "But Creative Writing is different," Mr. Vino continued.

"How so?"

"For starters, I only allow Juniors and Seniors to take the class. Students progress at an astounding rate in these four years. I don't believe the younger students can fully appreciate what my class has to offer."

The bookshelf wasn't full, and some of the books leaned drunkenly against each other instead of standing upright. Mr. Vino's voice turned into background noise as Sam's eyes fell on one particular tomb that was laying down on a shelf. It was bound in thick, brown leather, stitched together with a lighter tan leather cording. The face of the book was stained with a symbol. Sam didn't inquire too closely over what the stain was.

"...very competitive to get into the class. I've found it best to only admit fifteen per school y-"

"What is this?" Sam's interruption caused Mr. Vino's lips to tighten. He was obviously not a man used to such things. Sam hefted the book with the tulpa symbol on the cover.

"That," Mr. Vino said, matter-of-factly, "was a free prize I received from an antique store."

"Come again?" Sam turned his head slightly, giving the teacher partial side eye.

"Well, if you want to call it that." Mr. Vino stepped forward and relieved Sam of his burden, flipping open the book to reveal the same paper the brothers had seen in the possession of the boy at the library. "I bought a curio about two weeks ago, and I while I was setting up my display inside, it occurred to me one level wasn't as wide as the others. The back had a false panel. When I got it open, squeezed inside was this piece of treasure. I'm fairly certain the curator had no idea they had included it in the sale." He chuckled then placed his hand across the first page, sliding it to and fro. "As you can see, the pages are literally falling out. I certainly had no use for it, but what with the significance of the symbol, I felt it was meant for my students."

Startled, Sam exchanged a glance with Dean who pushed himself away from the shelf where he was leaning. "Meant for your students, how?" his older brother inquired.

Mr. Vino closed the book again and turned it to show them the symbol. "Well, if you believe in this sort of thing, there is a story that states this symbol can bring your ideas to life." His finger tapped on the cover of the book to emphasize his point. "Obviously, like I said, it's just a story, something I picked up reading an Alexandra David-Neel book about Tibet, but the kids appreciate that sort of thing. Those who pay attention to hear it, at least. So when I assigned them their most recent project, to create a character, it seemed apropos to give them loose pages from this book. Sort of a way to inspire them. " Mr. Vino moved to replace the book on the shelf, but Sam stopped him.

"Given you didn't actually pay for the book, Mr. Vino, I think it best it's returned to the antique store before it's purged of any more of the pages." Sam plucked it from the teacher's hands, adopting a level look in the event the teacher may argue. He got no resistance other than a huff and a small, unamused, smile.

"I suppose I can always go back and buy it outright."

"Yes, you can." Sam gave a small, respectful nod. "We'll be going now. Thank you for your time."

As Sam made his way to the door, Dean filing in behind him, Mr. Vino's voice turned them around, "Agents, I always enjoy talking shop, but you never did make it explicitly clear why you visited my classroom today." Sam hesitated, realizing the teacher was correct. He mentally kicked himself for the sloppiness in which they had handled this interview.

"We'll be in touch," Dean answered curtly. Sam wanted to blame something, and as they made their way to the main office, back out into the clasp of a Southern summer, he decided to blame the heat.


	5. Chapter 5

One good thing that could be said for the small town was that it did at least have a dive bar where Dean could drink his frustrations. He spun the bottom of the whiskey glass in circles on the table top before him, watching the amber liquid shimmer under the dim bar lights. Sam sat across from him at the high table, glowering at everything around them. He hadn't wanted to come to the bar with Dean, but he had been so wrapped up in their argument, he didn't realize this was Dean's intended destination as they climbed into the Impala after hours of circling the same debate at the hotel.

Dean had wanted to get a list of the students' names from Mr. Vino, or even from the girl in the office, to hunt each of the fifteen of them down right there at the school and take their tulpa-symbol-topped pages directly from their hands and destroy them immediately. Sam had countered that it was impractical, that it made better sense to wait until the next day when the students all turned their homework in to Mr. Vino, and all of them were compiled in one place, easy to grab. Dean didn't like that. It gave a full twenty-four hours for another monster to strike, for someone else to die. They didn't know where these creatures were lurking, what they looked like, what they were capable of doing. Well, scratch that. They knew what at least three of them were capable of. Dean didn't relish the idea of another stack of burnt, ripped apart, acid-laced, or whatever else bodies waiting for them when they woke up the next morning. What's more was that Sam agreed with him; he hadn't wanted to wait either. But he also hadn't wanted to accost teenagers in their classrooms. And by the time Dean felt as though he almost had Sam convinced he was right, the school day was over, and the students had all left the grounds. To say Dean was pissed off was an understatement. The rest of the afternoon and into the early evening had been Dean berating his brother while Sam tried to defend himself against a position he no longer strongly held. It made for a bitter and tense atmosphere sitting at the bar. Dean kicked back the whiskey and set the glass back down perhaps a little harder than was necessary, but he felt he had the right.

"That's six." Sam counted in a short voice. "Are you done?"

Dean eyed his brother angrily. Actually, he had been, but now he was going to order another, just to spite the son of a bitch. He stood up and took a step toward the bar counter, planning on doing just that, when shouts erupted near the pool tables.

 **"You sorry piece of shit! I know when I'm being hustled!"**  One man used both hands to aggressively shove another into a pillar holding billiard sticks. A few of them rocked loose, hitting the floor. The one doing the shoving was much larger, upper arms straining against a dark blue shirt that was a size too small. He grabbed the smaller man's shirt front, drawing him in as his other arm reared back, preparing to punch. A bouncer swept in and grabbed the man's arm before he could take his swing.

"You can take it off premises, asshole. I don't care what he did, you ain't kicking his ass while I'm on duty."

Dean abandoned his decision for another drink and waved Sam to follow him out the door as the bouncer ended up having to forcibly push the man's arm down. The indignant patron kept yelling about having been hustled as he struggled against the bouncer. Sam was on Dean's heels as he left the scene behind. They were still working a case, and he didn't want to be anywhere near where a stupid bar brawl took place. It wasn't worth the distraction. Directly behind Sam, however, was the small man who had been pushed, not seeming to be in a hurry to leave, but also not wasting any time while his assailant was being led to the door in a wrist lock. Dean groaned to himself. So much for staying away from the mess.

"You stay in my parking lot, and I'll call the law down here," the bouncer warned as he threw the angry musclehead a few staggering steps into the three men trying to get out of the doorway. "Now git!" Dean and Sam picked up their pace to get out of the fray that had nothing to do with them. The bar door swung shut behind all of them.

"You better start running," the wide man snarled behind them. Dean turned, putting himself between the voice and his little brother, ready to kick somebody's ass. This guy thought to threaten them? Hell no. He saw that the threat wasn't directed at them, though. The smaller man was being advanced upon by the bigger, but he wasn't backing down. The big man pulled an arm back and swung, stepping into the punch. The small guy dodged sideways and grabbed the bigger man's wrist. The movement didn't seem like much; it shouldn't have fazed the larger man at all. But as Dean watched, Sam a silent shadow at his back, the big man faltered in his step and stumbled. The small man released his arm and took a step back as the big one hit his knees in the gravel parking lot. A horrified expression painted his face as he beheld the angry welt on his arm where the smaller man's hand had been then lifted eyes to the guy who put him down.

He looked back at his arm, and he and all three on-lookers watched as the skin writhed, the welt stretching down to his fingertips and up, past his elbow, his bicep, crept under the tight sleeve of his t-shirt. A scream bubbled from his throat as the skin darkened to a deep red and became saturated with wetness, a sick slurping noise emanating from his body. The welted flesh appeared at his neckline, streaming up his chin and covering his terrified face. His screams became more frantic. As his skin rippled, it gushed with blood, skin disappearing under striated flesh. The ragged screams turned to gurgles then were silenced as the lump slopped sideways in a splash of blood.

Dean found it difficult to tear his wide, incredulous eyes away from the mess in the gravel to the small man who had started to walk away from the scene before them. He whipped his Colt from the back of his waistband and trained it with both hands at the monster. "That's far enough," he said firmly. The man froze. Dean heard Sam's footsteps in the gravel as he split off from behind him. As Sam edged around, Dean's periphery could make out he also had his Taurus out and pointed at the little guy. "Now I think it's time we have a little talk. Maybe you can even tell us about some of your friends." The man spun slowly to face Dean, ignoring the gun.

"What do you want to know?" he asked simply. His black hair was painted with the yellow glow of the sodium lights, and his brow shaded his eyes, just making them dark.

"For starters, you can tell me what the hell did you just did to that guy," Dean demanded, rotating his wrists slightly, using the motion to take in the sloppy mass on the ground without removing the barrel of the gun from sighting down the small man.

A sinister smile traced thin lips. "The very thing I think I'm going to do to you," he purred. "Turned him inside out." The man advanced on Dean. Multiple bullets ripped through him from both guns, and though each hit jerked his body, he kept on, reaching his hands forward for Dean's exposed arms. Dean threw himself backwards as a firm voice called from across the parking lot.

 **"I lift him off of his feet. I slam him to the ground on his back. I hold him there."** Dean stumbled but kept his footing as he watched his attacker lifted and thrown to the gravel by an unseen force. The man's head rocked backwards and bounced, and his eyes drooped closed. Dean looked wildly around, trying to find the source of the voice. An old man with a thin, white ponytail stepped from between a row of cars.

"You're..." Sam's voice was hushed. "You're that kid's character. The one with vocal-kinesis."

The old man smiled, pale blue eyes kind, "His name is Brandon, and yes. I am his brainchild." He barked a short laugh and looked down at himself. "Such as a child I am. I was one, not too long ago."

"Did Brandon give you a name?"

"Cliff. I'm Cliff." His eyes darted behind the brothers to the front of the bar. "And we're about to have an audience." Dean turned to see the bar door swinging as though someone had peeked out, likely drawn by the gunshots. Don't normal people run and hide from that? This town, man. "Let me take this one. He's far too dangerous to be given over to human police." Dean faced the old man again, considering.

"Dean," Sam's soft voice cut in. "He's right. We let the police try to take this guy, and he'll turn the entire force into that." He threw his chin in the direction of the wad of entrails that used to be inside the other man as he tucked his gun into the back of his waistband again. "We can't risk it."

"And what are you going to do with him?" Dean asked Cliff as he mimicked Sam's act of putting his gun away.

"Keep him held, contained, hidden away from anyone he might hurt. Word has spread you're here to help stop the ones that are killing. Not all of us are able to be part of it; some just aren't written that way. But those of us who can have been fighting back. We've already taken down the AI spider. We can't destroy it, but it's been stopped. For now."

"AI," Sam repeated. "Of course. That's why the spider bite vic was covered with acid instead of venom. It was a robot."

"I need to get this guy out of here. Now." Cliff's statement held an edge of urgency.

"Yeah, go ahead," Dean replied, chancing a glance back to the bar door.

"Best of luck to you." The brothers nodded their acceptance of his words. "I bind his hands behind his back. I lift his body a few feet. He drifts beside me as I walk." Cliff turned to leave with a respectful nod. "Gentlemen."

"Wait," Dean said suddenly. "You said you knew we were here to help, that word had spread. How?"

Smile lines deepened on Cliff's craggy face, "We've had someone on you since you arrived. Not a fighter, but a damn good scout." With that, he hurried along the edge of the parking lot and disappeared around the corner of the bar, the limp form of the small man floating with him.

The bar door slammed open. The bouncer hurried out and drew up short as his eyes tried to make sense of the inside out lump of what used to be a man laying in the gravel parking lot. The soaked, dark blue shirt looked black in the glowing neon lights on the bar front, blessedly covering the majority of the now-exposed organs, but muscles stood out starkly along his arms and head. A strangled yelp unbefitting of such a large man sprung from his throat. Dean sighed, rolled his eyes, and produced his badge. "Call your local boys," he instructed. He looked at Sam. "It's going to be a long night."


	6. Chapter 6

Sam exited the bathroom following his shower. The room lights were already off, so he flipped the bathroom switch quickly to keep the darkness settled over his already sleeping brother. He sat heavily then flopped backwards onto his hotel bed, hair spreading around his head in a dampened mane. Breathing deeply, he stretched his arms above his head, clasped his hands together to deepen the stretch, then brought them down in a wide arc to settle his hands across his stomach. The past hours had been a never-ending reel of local police and questions, emergency vehicles and curious by-standers, sweat and the smell of exposed meat. And an itch like he had had eyes on him. Having been told they had something stuck to their shoe, Sam could now practically feel being watched while they were outside. He knew it was irrational to be irritated that he hadn't noticed before, but he couldn't shake it.

He also couldn't shake his guilt at not having agreed to Dean's plan to scour the school for each and every student who had the tulpa paper. Mr. Vino had told them it was only fifteen; it wouldn't have been hard to take care of it. Provided, of course, none of them had left theirs at home, given the assignment wasn't due yet. Some of them likely hadn't even finished. That had been one of his arguments. Another had been how they would have explained to faculty why they were confiscating their students' homework. As feds, they were allowed a certain leeway for some of their actions, but Sam knew they had to tread lightly when it came to dealing with kids. Treading lightly was not one of Dean's strong suits.

He closed his eyes and sighed. It was late, or rather, it was very early morning. He knew he should try to rest. Dean never seemed to have a problem with grabbing a few hours whenever he could. Sam understood; sometimes -most times- their lives kept them from a normal sleep schedule. When you never knew when you'd get your next snooze, it was a good idea to sleep when you could. Still, his brain was in overdrive, and though his body wanted to rest, his mind would not stop.

What other terrors would these kids end up throwing out into the world? He had to admit, the AI spider idea was actually pretty neat on paper. The tiny pink Godzilla? Cute, if unfortunately deadly. But a man who can turn others inside out with a touch? That was downright horrifying. And they still had no idea what ripped that first vic in half and turned his insides into so much mush. What else? What else would kill before they could get to those papers?

Sam's eyes snapped open as another thought occurred to him. What if destroying the papers didn't destroy the monsters? He had been operating under the assumption they'd simply burn the papers and be done. But you can't burn an idea that's already been realized. He edged his way further up the bed, positioning himself fully onto the mattress. He buried his head in the pillow as though trying to block out that last thought, but it echoed through his mind as he sought sleep. You can't burn an idea. You can't. He wasn't sure he ever fell fully asleep.

.oOo.

Sam squeezed closed eyes tighter as Dean smacked the side of his foot a few times. "C'mon, Sammy." He groaned softly; had he been sleeping finally? He couldn't decide.

"How many bodies?" It knotted his insides, that being his first question of the morning. How many people had died while the two of them were safely inside their hotel room?

"Fifteen," Dean answered. "It was a friggin' massacre."

Sam bolted upright, heart hammering. " _Fifteen?_ " he repeated incredulously.

"Nah, not really. None last night. Woke you up, though." Dean wore a satisfied expression, unaware Sam hadn't truly slept, and seemingly pleased at having woken him up so quickly.

Sam rubbed at his face with both hands. A sound not unlike a growl rumbled past his teeth. "Jerk."

"Bitch." Dean held out a slip of paper, "Here. This was under the door when I got up."

Sam reached for the paper his brother offered and opened the center fold. In a large, looping hand were two words written in black pen:  _Mangleclaw neutralized._

"Mangleclaw," Sam looked up at Dean's face to gauge his response to the next thing he said. "The thing that tore the guy up at the quarry."

"That's what I'm thinking. Seems like the right name for something that can do that kind of damage. I'm also thinking that's not Cliff's handwriting."

Sam peered down at the paper again. The handwriting flowed across it, written in such a way as made Sam think the one who wrote it was more used to a different alphabet than Latin. It was... elegant. He had to agree with Dean. The handwriting did not seem to match the old man. Someone else then. "The scout?" Cliff had informed them of being watched, followed. It made sense to Sam that the scout had been told they were aware... or the scout had been watching the whole scene in the parking lot.

"Could be. I don't have a better theory." Sam nodded at Dean's words. He dropped the paper in his lap and ran his hands along his hair, pushing it back, finger-combing it, very easily taming the locks. He braced himself for Dean's inevitable comment. "You know, you could just cut it. I'll do it for you." There it was.

"Shut up." His retort had no heat to it. The familiar jibing was part of what kept them grounded. Even when a case wasn't going right, when they were chasing their own tails, it was the little things, like the comments about his hair or the earlier name calling that allowed them some normalcy. And Sam clung to those. He swung his feet over the side of the bed. "So what's the plan?"

.oOo.

The plan was they had no plan. They had nothing to do but wait for Mr. Vino's Creative Writing class to be in session before they could gather the papers after they were turned in to the teacher. Dean was ready to be mad at Sam again since they hadn't found out while at the school what time that would be, but Sam had eased his frustration by saying, "The kid at the library, Brandon, said he was there during that class and that he had an hour. Directly following was Mr. Vino's lunch, when we were at the school. We have our time frame."

What failed to ease anything, though, was the worry Sam shared that had apparently eaten at him all night. Could they really destroy these monsters by burning the tulpa pages? He realized until Sam had voiced his concerns they had both assumed -without discussion- fire would do the trick. It was the solution to so many of their problems; burn it, dust off, leave town. The decision had been even more solidified to him when their bullets hadn't affected that asshole who had almost turned him inside out last night. He, himself, had taken to packing silver at all times now. Sam, however, had been using lead. Neither had even slowed the guy.

So even though they knew what time to retrieve the papers, they really had no idea how to do it discretely -damn Sam and his insistence on tact- or even what to do with the papers once they got them, because now Sam was claiming they shouldn't torch them, that maybe the answer isn't in flames.

Beads of sweat dotted Dean's forehead. He preferred the cool of the air conditioned hotel room, but being in there had felt too much like hiding. There was a job to be done. Even though he didn't know where the next monster was, what it was, or what it would do, knowing the job wasn't done put an itch under him to get out and  **do** something. The best he had come up with was to come out to the park where the baby Godzilla had barbecued that couple, killing Karen and putting Tyler in the hospital. Maybe they'd see it, be able to stop it. Maybe a well-placed bullet would kill it. How the hell had Godzilla been stopped anyway? Or had Godzilla won? He wasn't well versed in older movies.

Sam sat on a picnic table, feet propped on the attached bench. Most of the tables scattered throughout the park were under large trees, protected by the leafy shade. This one was no exception. Dean paced from one end of the shade to the other, very aware of Sam's eyes following him. He could almost feel his brother willing him to stop, but dammit, how could he? And how could Sam be sitting there so calmly when Dean's own agitation was sky high?

He started stealing glances at Sam with each of his passes, observing his body language. The way his clasped hands were fidgeting against each other. His furrowed brow. The tightness around his eyes. Twitching flinches at his jaw. Dean slowly realized that Sam wasn't as calm as he first thought. Somehow, knowing his little brother was struggling too helped ease down Dean's anxiety over the situation. It was his job to look out for Sammy, and he couldn't do that if he was stressing him with his actions.

Dean seated himself on the table next to Sam. In front of them, across an expanse of sun-crisped grass, stood a copse of trees, beside which the runner's trail passed. The burnt bodies had been found near there. Local police had already combed all of it, coming up with nothing out of the ordinary. Still...

"Wanna search it?" He wasn't expecting anything to come of it, but Dean needed something to do. Anything was better than just sitting around and waiting.

Sweat decorated Sam's face as well. He had had the foresight to bring a bottle of water, and the extra hydration stood out as dampened T's on the front and back of his shirt. "We don't need to; it's clear."

"What, because the local smokies said so?" Dean asked dismissively. "You know we-"

"No," Sam interrupted. "Because someone's in there."

Dean's level of alertness sharpened to a point, and a tingle thrilled through him as he squinted at the copse, trying to pick out whoever it was Sam saw. "If someone's in there, it ain't clear." He felt rather than saw Sam's shrug.

"It's not a monster," he insisted. "Whoever it is  _let_ me see them."

"Let you," Dean repeated, eyes still scanning and seeing nothing. "What did you see?"

"From this distance, it's hard to say." Sam was also skimming his eyes along the trees. "It was just a flash of... blue, I think. And pale skin. But something tells me if they hadn't wanted me to see, I wouldn't have. That means they're on our side."

Dean glanced over at Sam. "And just how long were you planning on waiting to tell me?"

Sam shrugged in answer. They sat silently for a few more minutes, eyes straining into the shaded copse. Dean was ready to ask Sam if he was absolutely sure he had actually seen something when a flicker of color in the dense green, brown, and black caught his attention. Sam was right, it was a shock of blue topping pale skin. The figure was too far away and tucked into the shadows for them to clearly make out any further details. Sam was also right in that whoever it was, they were clearly allowing the brothers to catch this glimpse. As Dean stared, shadows seemed to wash over and swallow the being. Just like that, they were gone. Dean blinked a few times, trying to convince himself he could still see something past the shadows. Eventually he gave up and turned to face Sam.

" _Now_ do you want to go search it?"

"Do you really think whoever that was is still in there?"

Dean hesitated. Did he? Probably not. He gave his shoulders a non-committal hitch. "Doesn't matter." Whatever he thought, he knew he wouldn't be satisfied until he laid eyes on every inch of that copse to be certain the character who revealed them self was either there or gone. He was already convinced it had to be a tulpa character, very likely the scout Cliff had told them about. And by giving away their location, maybe, just maybe, it was to purposefully draw himself and Sam into the stand of trees. All of these thoughts rattled through Dean's head as he and Sam stepped down from the table together and gave up their shelter of shade to venture across the grassy, heat-soaked park. That last thought gave him pause. If it wasn't the scout, they could be walking into a trap. Not that they hadn't countless times before, but he preferred to know when a trap was a trap. It made springing it more satisfying than not. He let himself be aware of the comforting press of his Colt against the small of his back, hoping that if he ended up using it, it would be more effective than last time.

Scrub along the tree line crackled under their shoes as they stepped through, both smoothly drawing their guns (apparently Sam had also considered the possibility of this being a trap). This area was not meant for foot traffic. The relative coolness of the shade lessened -but did not stop- their sweating. Dried leaves and twigs crunched as they eased carefully past trees that got denser the further in they went. Dean had expected to be able to see the edge of trees on the other side, but the copse seemed to be larger than it looked from the outside. A sudden memory of Purgatory flashed across him, gripping his spine with a shiver of excitement before he could tamp it down. This was not the place to be in that mindset. Not when they were seeking a possible ally. Dean kept his brother's back to his, and they both traveled further into the trees while circling in a guarded motion born of a lifetime of knowing an attack from behind could very well be the end.

"I wasn't sure you would come," said a soft, alto voice in what was almost a whisper. Dean felt Sam freeze behind him, just as he did. The voice seemed to have come from everywhere. He had no point of reference for where to start looking for the owner. "You mistrust me," she continued. "You mistrust most."

Dean's eyes danced through the trees in his line of sight, trusting Sam to do the same behind him. "Hiding won't make me trust you," he replied.

"No," the voice centered behind him, and he didn't need Sam's tap on the back of his arm to whip around. In one motion, he stepped smoothly to stand beside his brother and lifted the barrel of his Colt.


	7. Chapter 7

_A world of pain had to have been experienced for such hardness in what could otherwise be, in her opinion, beautiful green eyes. He hid his pain behind anger, and if his little weapon posed any threat, perhaps she would be afraid. People who are hurting tend to lash out faster and with less reservations than others. She tilted her head, considering, and then corrected herself. Even with the pain and anger, the eyes were still beautiful._

_She then tried to envision herself as they saw her, standing head and shoulders above the tall one, something he seemed to dislike a great deal, judging by his expression as he lifted his chin to meet her eyes. Her willowy frame made her seem delicate, despite her height. Soft, lilac skin on long fingers tipped with claws traced up bare arms to slowly give way to scales that thickened at her shoulders and thinned to flesh again as they ran across her chest to disappear in the edge of her wispy black dress and up her neck to a face unlike that of the humans before her. Theirs were almost harsh in comparison, lacking the elongated and smoothed features of her kind. Their eyes were smaller than hers. Where their noses were prominent, hers was settled into her face; their lips were full, hers thin. They were sweating from the heat of the day; her skin and scales were dry, eagerly soaking in the heat, needing it. She also had fangs, small, yet a formidable weapon her kind used when threatened._

_Interesting, she thought, that she would know so much of her own kind and her own world, though she had only experienced this world, one where she did not belong. She could feel it like a dull ache in her soul. No, she did not belong here, and while it was worrisome, she couldn't let it distract her._

_"Now that I have revealed myself, I suppose you will begin to trust me?" her deep, whispery voice wasn't changed now that she was out in the open. It had occurred to her that sending her voice without her form might unnerve them; she had been right. Large, dark purple eyes, slitted like those of a snake, regarded the weapons still pointed at her chest. They would not damage her, but as long as the men felt it necessary to hold them, they would be unable to reach a peace. She watched the hesitation bloom behind their eyes at her words. The guns were their security, but they were trying to work out whether they needed it against her. She waited, holding herself very still, only allowing her eyes to flick between the hard one and the tall. She almost smiled, thinking of a being who was a good foot shorter than her as tall. Obviously the term was relative. He did, after all, tower over all of the other humans she had seen him interact with since she had been put to observe them. She watched the decision flicker through the hard one's eyes moments before he lowered his gun. The tall one mimicked the action so quickly after, it appeared they moved as one. She deduced that he was used to taking queues from his partner. Only once the guns were tucked safely away did she relax her stance for them. The very air around them seemed to move again._

_"I believe introductions are in order," she suggested._

_The tall one spoke. "I'm Sam," he motioned to the hard one. "This is my brother, Dean."_

_Brothers. My. She was not often surprised. "I am called Yuelina." She took a small step forward, offering her hands to Sam since he was the one who had spoken. One palm up, the other down, in the traditional greeting. She saw him pause, confusion in his eyes, and she realized too late that her customs were not his. Before she could lower her hands, though, Sam also stepped forward and took them in his. She waited. Sam had three choices in that moment, though it was now clear to Yuelina he did not know what they were. He could have stacked the backs of her hands together, trapping them between his, to show he felt himself to be her superior. He could have put his own hands together, deferring to her. Or, he could have kept their hands just as they were, parallel. A fanged smile spread across her face when Sam did nothing. She knew it was ignorance which stayed his hands, but she still accepted their places as equals. She repeated the steps with Dean, despite him also not knowing what they meant. He, too, simply took her hands, and for a brief, amused moment, she considered asserting her dominance over him just to see their bewilderment at differing greetings between the two._

_Formalities out of the way, she stepped back again to view both of them easily. It was time to speak plainly. "I have been following you."_

_"So we've been told," Dean replied. "Your buddy Cliff helped us out last night. Told us about you."_

_"Yes, I heard.. and saw." Yuelina felt a distasteful shudder run through her. "I also saw what Amanda's character did... and what he almost did to you. There has been some discussion as to which of the characters is most terrifying, that nameless man, the Mangleclaw, or..." She trailed off, eyes lifting away from the brothers to gaze blankly beyond, seeing the beast inside her head._

_"Or what?" Sam asked. "Is there something else you've gotten?"_

_"Gotten?" Yuelina blinked them back into focus. "We were fortunate to lose only one in the altercation against the Mangleclaw. We dare not face this one. Not without your help."_

_"You lost one," mused Dean. "Torn to pieces, like that first victim." It wasn't a question._

_Yuelina nodded anyhow. "As you learned last night, not all of us can die from what you would consider conventional means. Others, however, are susceptible to your firearms... or to being ripped apart. It depends entirely on how each of us have been designed by our creators."_

_"Then it sounds like we do still need to get those papers," Sam's grey-green eyes lit up as the idea struck him. "We need to read them and learn about each character. Find out what their weakness are so we can stop them. This whole time, I've been needing something to research..." He shook his head, frustration taking over. Yuelina waited, seeing there was more to his thought than he had said aloud. When it was evident Sam would not continue on his own, she prompted._

_"Go on." But Sam shook his head again and looked away._

_"We'll get the papers," Dean spoke up to pull Yuelina's attention away from Sam. She kept her gaze on the taller brother for a few more heartbeats before turning it to Dean. "We'll get them, we'll read them, and then we'll hunt down and kill every single one of those sons of bitches."_

_Yuelina tilted her head and used both hands to push long hair behind her shoulders. Tips of pointed ears peaked out from the blue locks, the pale skin standing out starkly against the blue. "Every single one?" Dean's returning stare was defiant. "You would hunt me? Cliff? The rest?"_

_"It's my job. It's what we do."_

_"Your job," she scoffed, finding annoyance in not only his stubbornness, but in his easy talk of killing her after accepting her as an equal. "To kill innocents. That is what you do?"_

_"You ain't natural."_

_She stepped closer to him. "Natural." Another step. "You speak of this?_ _**You** _ _?" Step. "Dean, hard one,_ _**you** _ _are not natural." Her eyes stayed on his, but she peripherally watched as his hand inched to the small of his back. His head was craned back to the point of what she would assume was discomfort, but he did not back away from her. Stubbornness. She could have already ripped his throat out with him exposing it as he was. Yuelina took a slow, deep breath as she leaned down over him, putting her face close to his, purple eyes meeting green with only inches to spare. "I can smell it on you. You are impure. You are the unnatural thing you hunt. Remember that next time you point that toy at someone." Dean's gun was between them._

_Yuelina stood as slowly as she had leaned down, pulled her shoulders back, straightened her head, but kept her eyes cut down to Dean, giving the impression of looking down at something insignificant. She held her ground and rolled her eyes toward Sam who was standing with both hands held out slightly toward them, palms forward, looking very uncertain whether interference would escalate or ease the strain between her and his brother. Dean reluctantly edged backwards, obviously not one to usually give ground, but he kept his gun out. Still honoring their status of equals, Yuelina also stepped back. Her chin relaxed so as to allow her nose to point at his face as she searched the anger in his eyes. She let her own eyes drop to the gun for a few seconds then lifted them to Dean's again._

_She decided against telling him she was already dying._

.oOo.

Sam watched the tension stretch between Dean and Yuelina even as they backed away from each other. She seemed incredibly blithe about having Dean's gun pointed at her -for a second time- and even called it a toy. Dean had to know it wouldn't do anything to her. It wasn't the gun that had caused her to advance on him; it had been Dean's threat to kill her and the other non-murdering characters. Sam itched to clean up this mess.

"Dean," he said quietly. He didn't expect his brother to take his eyes off his mark and wasn't surprised when Dean made no outward appearance at listening. Sam continued speaking anyhow, "Yuelina is helping us. Cliff is helping. The others. They lost someone while hunting something we couldn't even identify, let alone know where to start looking for it." He paused, letting his words sink in. "We need them. And now they're asking us for our help because they need us too. Whatever's left, it's going to take all of us to take it down."

"Yeah, well, we don't know what's left, though," Dean replied, finally sparing a quick look to Sam and letting his gun drop. He used it to point at Yuelina before turning the motion into putting it away again. " _She_  hasn't told us." Dean turned his words to her, "You just clammed up and went on a little mental vacation when it was mentioned."

The folds in the back of her long, black dress twitched. Sam started. Was that a tail?

"If you are lucky, you will never know why seeing it affected me so," Yuelina told Dean cryptically. "The simple answer, though, is that the creature we seek was inspired by a Strix."

"A Strix?" Dean looked at Sam. "You familiar with that?"

Sam shook his head to his brother and settled into student mode to listen to Yuelina. He lived for the hunt, he knew that, but he truly could never get enough of learning.

"It is from your Greek mythologies. In the story, Polyphonte and her sons exhibited cannibalistic tendencies. As punishment, she was turned into a Strix, an evil, owl-like creature that feasts on human flesh. In some tellings, she has only two legs; in others, she has four. This one has four. It is larger than you, Sam, with a wingspan half again as wide as you are tall. It has both owl and human features, quite an abomination to behold."

"Why hasn't it killed yet?" Sam asked. "By your description, it should have a pretty high body count by now."

"Procrastination on the student's behalf?" Yuelina answered with a wry smile. "Or perhaps the student simply struggled with making the character their own. Whatever the reason, it was sighted just this morning, scouting the town. One can surmise its writer only just finished the assignment."

Dean actually smirked at that. "Putting it off until the day it's due. I remember how that went."

"The delay worked out in our favor. While it has been seen observing this morning, it is, in fact nocturnal. I do not expect it will hunt in daylight. However, I fully believe it will strike tonight. And when it does, when it gets a real taste of human flesh, not just what it was written to know, that will only increase its hunger. There will be more than one kill." Yuelina looked back and forth between the two of them. Her face had been calm and smooth during most of their talk, hard to read even when she had been obviously angry, standing over Dean, but now Sam could see a tightness at the corners of her large eyes that gave lie to her calmness. She was worried. Dean spoke before he could.

"Then it's a good thing we're about to get the papers. It should be about that time by now," Dean jerked his head at Sam to motion him to come, and he whirled around to head back out of the copse. "That'll be the first one we read so we know how to kill the thing." Sam hung back, seeing that Yuelina hadn't made a move to follow.

"Will you come with us?" His soft question stopped Dean and caused him to turn to them.

Yuelina ran her right hand up her left arm, claws playing along the scales, making a rasping sound where the edges lifted slightly. His gaze followed where she touched. "I cannot," she replied. Sam raised his eyes from her pale scales to her face, and at his questioning look, she continued. "Like the reptiles of this world, I am cold-blooded and bask in this wonderful heat." Dean snorted behind him. "But my skin is too fragile for the sun. It is extraordinarily painful. I have to stay in the shadows and can travel openly only by darkness. Anything you do by daylight, I cannot assist with it."

"Find it for us," Sam instructed. "Our best bet is to find and kill this thing while it's resting, before it starts hunting. You can do that, right? I mean, Cliff called you a 'damn good scout.'"

"Yeah," Dean chimed in. "How've you been following us in the daylight anyway?"

Yuelina tilted her head with a small smile. "I have my own means. I shall do my best to locate beast." Sam looked over his shoulder at Dean, who nodded slightly, then back at Yuelina. She was gone.


	8. Chapter 8

One frustration of working a job in a small town was that presenting themselves as feds at their first crime scene meant they had to keep up that role with everyone else they met. Word traveled faster than they did, apparently. Dean lamented the fact they hadn't been able to initially greet Mr.. Vino as college students of a sort, but they had agreed that hadn't been an option even before entering the school. Being feds had caused them to almost screw up their first meeting with the teacher. Dean supposed the heat wasn't much of a help either; he continued with his refusal to put the suit back on, avoiding any long sleeves in this weather. He mentally rolled his eyes at Yuelina's earlier statement about it being "wonderful heat." The hell with that. Without sleeves, though, without a jacket, it would have been impossible to simply stroll into Mr.. Vino's classroom, have Sam distract him with scholarly questions, and tuck the papers into his clothes. Also, it was Friday, the papers were due, and that meant Mr.. Vino would be grading them over the weekend; he wouldn't be setting them aside to forget about them. Very likely he would have known the papers were gone as soon as they left the classroom, or at the very least, by the end of the school day. It would have been more than obvious who took them. They had already shown interest in -and taken- the book with the rest of the pages. That had been another of Sam's arguments. Another reasonable one, though Dean wouldn't admit that out loud. He didn't have to admit it, though. Just the fact that he conceded to not going back to the school seemed to be enough for Sam.

Therefore, they were back to waiting. Dean was ready to rip his hair out. Or maybe Sam's since he had so much more to spare. All this waiting was driving him crazy. He just wanted to do something, to feel like he was accomplishing something. He felt as though it had been a week of nothing more than sitting around with their thumbs up their asses. Back to waiting. Back to waiting. He was pacing next to that damn picnic table again. Pacing while Sam sat. They had walked out of the copse and right back to where they were when Sam had sighted Yuelina. They hadn't even made it to the car before deciding it was impractical to go to the school just yet. They would have to wait - _wait! ugh!_ \- until Mr.. Vino left the pages unattended.

Getting onto the school grounds without checking in at the office would be the easy part. The school was comprised of several stand-alone buildings with just the one security guard at the front door. It would be nothing to just park and walk right past the main building. The problem would be figuring out when to get into Mr.. Vino's classroom without him there. Dean remembered the office aid saying if she knew Mr.. Vino, he'd be in his classroom during his lunch break. That sounded like a teacher who never stopped working; chances were good he wouldn't leave the room for any reason until the school day ended. And then he'd have the papers with him. What were they going to do then? Follow the man home?

"Okay," Sam made him stop pacing for a moment. They were still throwing back and forth ideas. "So I go into the office, get Mr.. Vino called in to ask him some questions, and you just go into his room and take the papers."

"You honestly think that man will leave his classroom? They'll take you to him, just like before." Dean saw Sam grimace as he continued to pace.

"Maybe we can take a page from Yuelina's book-" Sam stopped short as Dean shot him a look.

"I'm not even going to acknowledge that as a pun."

"Shut up. You just did, and it wasn't supposed to be. Anyway. We can do what she does and just watch his room from the trees. Wait until he leaves the room. He was made out to be some kind of workaholic, so I bet he won't leave at the end of the day when the students do. He'll be in that room when everyone else is gone. Maybe he'll eventually, I don't know, go to the bathroom or something."

"Teachers and nurses, man. Biggest bladders in the known universe." Dean scrubbed a hand down his face. They were really running low on ideas; they both kept shooting each others' suggestions down. "Still, I guess it's better than standing around out here."

.oOo.

Rather than parking the Impala in the school lot, which would be basically waving a flag to show they were there, Dean opted to park in the lot of the grocery store that the kid Brandon had pointed out shared a property line with the school. He was disappointed to find there was absolutely no shade to park under. That was rapidly becoming his number one rule of parking in a place that made him feel, dare he think it? Freaking moist. A trickle of sweat ran between his shoulder blades as though punctuating the thought. God, he felt dirty.

Dean unlocked and opened the trunk of the Impala. There was an itch under his skin that insisted he arm himself with more than just his Colt and pocket knife before walking away from his car. Sam made noises about it being unnecessary since they were just aiming to get some papers, but Dean didn't pay close enough attention to bother with what his brother was saying as he tucked more weapons about himself. After a few ignored statements, Sam gave in and pulled a few of his own weapons from the trunk as well.

It was disturbingly easy to walk through the alley where commercial trucks unloaded goods for the store and right into the school yard without being noticed. Dean presumed the school security guard was probably still sitting at the front door, reading. Class was obviously in session; there were no students or teachers to be seen anywhere outside. They didn't stay out in the open for long, though. Sam lead the way and Dean watched their backs as they edged around behind what the aid told them was the Sciences and Computer building and into the the thick line of trees bordering the far end of the grounds, opposite the main building and front parking lot. They crunched their way through knee high scrub until they reached an area where the press of trees and shade kept underbrush from growing very tall. Once clear of anything that could trip them or make their trek too loud, they headed down the hill to find a spot across from Mr.. Vino's classroom windows.

Dean considered them lucky that the classroom was on the corner of the building since the whole damn wall was an unbroken expanse of windows. There would be no confusion in figuring out which set of windows led into Mr.. Vino's room. They came parallel to the building and peered at the shine of the sun reflected back at them.

"Nothing to see for now," Dean grumbled.

"Yeah, but with this being down a hill, at least the sun will be behind the trees before true sunset. We should be able to see in there not too long after the kids go home," Sam's statement made sense, and Dean allowed himself a small nod to acknowledge it. He sat down, leaning his back against a tree trunk, something Sam had already done, and they both silently watched the windows of the building as though they could see something inside. Dean's heel began to bounce as though urging him to get up and move. More waiting.

.oOo.

"I found the roost." Yuelina's voice behind them caused Sam and Dean to scramble to their feet. There had been no other sounds to announce that she had joined them. Sam supposed she had appeared much as she had disappeared earlier. He didn't think she had invisible wings like angels, so she wasn't flying, but he didn't know how she did it. He made a mental note to inquire about it later. For now, though...

"You found the Strix?" Sam asked.

"We cannot know for certain to call it a Strix," Yuelina corrected. "All we know is that it was inspired by one. And no, I did not find the creature itself, just its roost."

"How do you know it was this thing's roost?" Dean asked. Sam glanced at his brother and back at Yuelina. He was wondering the same thing. She took a deep breath, and the skirt of her dress twitched. Sam was becoming more certain she had a tail.

"There was another murder," she began.

"I thought you said this thing was nocturnal," Dean interrupted. Sam looked at him with an expression he hoped would be taken as a cue to shut his mouth so Yuelina could fill them in. Dean either didn't see it or ignored it. "We could have been out looking for it too, but we took your word it was sleeping somewhere. We've been sitting on our asses, just-"

"Dean." Sam was done listening to the tirade. He kept a firm expression when Dean turned his angry face to him. "Let her talk." He saw his brother's jaw clench; Dean obviously wanted to go off some more, but to his credit, he took a slow breath in, causing his nose to flare slightly. The two of them stared each other down for a few more seconds before Dean relaxed. Sam nodded his appreciation before turning back to Yuelina. "Another murder," he prompted. "What did you find?" He watched her eyes flick back and forth between them, measuring their interaction before responding.

"Remains, mostly. Female. Elderly, I would say. There was little left, and that fresh. The remains were next to what appears to be the beginnings of a very large ground nest. It seems the beast has been spending the daylight hours building a roost rather than resting." Dean opened his mouth, but she sped on, over-riding his attempt at another interruption. "As I have said repeatedly, it was merely inspired by the Strix, but the student made it their own."

"Do you have any idea where it would have gone?" Sam asked. "What it's up to? More roosting? More hunting?" Yuelina shook her head.

"Like you, I can only speculate. I can say it seemed in my best interest to not be nearby when it returned, though, so I brought this information to you."

"For what good it does us," Dean grumbled under his breath but still loud enough to be heard. Yuelina turned to face him. Whether she planned to say anything was held up by the shrill ringing of the school bell. All three of them shrank a little further back into the trees, though the density already had them well hidden, and they looked to the school grounds as students poured from the doors of the many buildings. Sam noted the long shadows walking with them. Not much longer, and they would be able to see into Mr.. Vino's classroom. He hoped he had been right about the teacher staying behind after hours.

The trio waited and watched as the flood of students dominated the pathways between the buildings. The bulk of them aimed for the main building that held the office, but many cut around the side of it and took themselves straight to the front parking lot. Others aimed for the Music and Arts building for the smaller parking lot at the bottom of the hill. Sam willed everyone to move faster, to clear themselves away so he, Dean, and Yuelina could focus on Mr.. Vino and his classroom. Between classes the other day, the students had swept across the grounds and were gone in a matter of minutes. Now, everyone was taking their time, playfully rough housing with each other, trading books or notes, there was even one couple who decided it was a good time to stop and explore the insides of each others' mouths until a teacher saw and separated them. Slowly but surely, though, the crowds along the walkways thinned, and the sound of car and bus engines rumbled out of earshot. A few teachers still wandered between buildings at irregular intervals, but the school finally emptied of students.

By the time no more activity was evident outside, the sun stood atop the trees on the peak of the hill, teasing shadows into long, distorted versions of what stood between them and the light. Sam wanted some way to pass the time rather than waiting in silence. He addressed Yuelina.

"How do you do it?" he asked. He felt Dean shift beside him and knew his attention was also on the character with them.

"What are you asking?"

"Travel. One minute you're here, then you're gone, then here again. It's not magic," his last sentence wasn't a question, but she answered as though it was.

"No, it is not magic. It..." she paused, and Sam watched her mull over how to put her response into words. "It is a matter of shadows. I let them... envelop me, and I fold them around myself until I am no longer a physical entity. In that state, anywhere light can travel, so too can I. And I am able to manifest physically once more where another shadow touches the world."

Sam tried to not let surprise show on his face, but he wasn't sure how well he was doing. Riding shadows through sunlight? That was something new to him, and he was impressed with the student who came up with the idea. However impossible that seemed in the real world, it worked for Yuelina because she wasn't real, not exactly anyway. He reminded himself that all of the characters were real enough to affect this world, real enough to kill. But maybe not so real that the laws of this world affected them. It was an interesting thought.

"So you got a tail under there or what?" Dean's sudden question cut through Sam's musings, and he jumped a little at the sound of it.

"Dean," he nearly hissed the name and got an unapologetic shrug in response. He should have expected Dean would notice the twitching of the dress just as he did, but damn that was a rude way to ask. Tact really wasn't one of his strong suits.

"If I show you what I have under my coverings, would you show me what is under yours?" Yuelina's alto voice took on a note she hadn't used with the brothers yet. It was almost flirty, and Sam watched Dean's reaction of slight surprise before recovering. Dean slipped easily into flirt mode, though, folding his arms across his chest and donning the cocky smile that usually did one of two things: get a drink thrown on him, or get him laid. The confidence on his face grew as Yuelina slowly moved closer to him, hips swaying more than usual. He brazenly allowed his gaze to rake her from head to toe and back again.

"Oh yeah, I'll show you something."

"First, you would kill me. Now, you would bed me." A long, reptilian tail whipped out of the back of the dress, and the end slapped into Dean's upper arm. The motion reminded Sam of an angry lizard. Dean yelped and jumped back from Yuelina as his opposite hand clapped over the pink welt that immediately bloomed on his arm where he had been hit. He looked like he wasn't sure whether he should retaliate. Yuelina didn't make another move against him, though, and lowered her tail back into her dress. Sam now saw it was slit almost to her waist, but the fabric overlapped itself, giving the impression of a solid piece. "You need not bother show me yours," she said as she looked back toward the school yard, away from Dean.

Sam hid the broad grin that threatened to split his face behind his hand and coughed to disguise a laugh. Based on Dean's glare, he knew exactly why Sam had coughed, though. It made him cough again before controlling the laughter and smothering the smile. There was a tense blanket that covered Dean and Yuelina, but amusement radiated from Sam as the two of them joined her in watching the windows as the sun dipped behind the trees and allowed them a view through the glass. Clarity through the windows came slowly as the sunlight slowly gave way to darkness and allowed shadows to creep over the grounds.


	9. Chapter 9

Dean would have been fine with ignoring Yuelina for the rest of the job; he didn't care what Sam said, they didn't need her. After she had smacked him with her tail, he had turned away, but he felt that tall bitch behind his shoulder like a towering weight as he waited for the teacher to do something more than hunch over his desk. Unfortunately, Sam did think they needed her, so the two of them had started planning what to do once Mr.. Vino finally left his classroom. Dean couldn't resist the fact that an actual plan was taking shape, and he eventually joined in.

"...and since you're the smallest of us, it makes best sense for you to be the one to go through the window you unlocked," Sam concluded.

"What makes you think I unlocked a window?" Dean asked. He thought back to the instance. Mr.. Vino had talked about the students writing reports on killing birds or something right after he had done it. Come to think of it, he had meant to ask Sam why he had snickered about it.

Sam's smile was almost condescending. "Dean. You've had that habit since we were kids. Tell me that's not why you went over to the window and pretended to read someone's paper."

Dean hitched his shoulders. Even though Dad had long since taught them how to pick locks, Sam was right that Dean had never fallen out of the habit of unlocking a window in certain buildings, in the event they'd have to go back inside later. When he was younger and smaller, it had seemed reasonable. Now, at 6'1", going through windows wasn't the preferred method. Sam seemed to take his silence as admittance that he had, in fact, unlocked the window, but Dean was willing to admit to himself that it was also in part because he was reluctant to actually follow through with it when there was a perfectly good door just around the corner of the building. Maybe it was time to stop unlocking windows after all.

Dean opened his mouth to suggest a door rather than the window when Mr.. Vino leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head, a motion that lead to him standing up. About time! Dean changed what he was about to say, "He's leaving the room. Tell me he's leaving the room."

"I think..." Sam watched the teacher as he twisted his torso back and forth and stretched side to side. "...maybe..." Mr.. Vino dropped his arms to his sides and strode purposefully toward the classroom door. His hands were empty, suggesting he would certainly be back. "Let's do it."

Dean looked from Sam to Yuelina, who had stopped talking after confirming that, yes, she could traverse shadows with the brothers in tow. "You ready to whoosh us over there?"

"Whoosh," she repeated quietly. Did see seem paler than before? No, it must be a trick of the darkness, making her light lavender skin seem even lighter, almost white in the shadows of the trees. "That is not the word I would use. Prepare yourselves. This may be... unsettling."

Before Dean could ask what she meant, Yuelina's hands reached out and clasped each of the brothers' shoulders. In an instant, Dean's world shifted, slanted, as though everything was made up of rubber bands being pulled to their limits, including himself. His body was a million straws, or was it the stuff being sucked through the straws? His vision was a blast of white light, no he was being plummeted into darkness, no it was suddenly, he was on his hands and knees beside the window outside Mr.. Vino's classroom. The whole thing lasted only a fraction of a second, but he felt as though it had spanned several lifetimes. He lifted his head to see Sam in a similar position, looking just as disoriented as he felt. Yuelina was knelt gracefully beside them, and she urged Sam to his feet.

"Hurry," she said to him before turning to Dean. "You too." A single claw tapped the bottom edge of the unlocked window, somehow keeping time with Sam's footsteps as he skirted around the side of the building to let himself inside. "I do not wish for us to be seen."

Dean arched an eyebrow at her. Seen? The side of the building they were on faced only the trees across the courtyard, and the chance of another late-working teacher walking down the hill from the Sciences building was slim since that walkway lead to the Arts building instead of the main building and front parking lot. But then he realized Yuelina was looking up at the sky and remembered why they had chosen to use her shadow ability rather than simply running across the open courtyard. It wasn't just the teachers they had to avoid. Dean opened the window and hoisted himself through the frame.

.oOo.

Sam made his way through the door at the end of the building just in time to see Mr.. Vino's sweater vest disappear into the teacher's lounge. The entire building was nothing more than a single hallway lined with classrooms on one side and more classrooms, bathrooms, an assistant Principal's office (there was one for each building, according to the office aide), and the teacher's lounge on the other side, broken only by a T intersection in the center, which lead to the outdoor breezeway where they had come during their first visit. The office and lounge flanked the intersection. Sam's long stride ate the distance between the end of the hall and the center in short order, and he positioned himself in a casual lean against the door frame, crossing his arms across his broad chest. He was very aware of his size and knew he could dominate a doorway if need be, but he currently had no intention of attempting to intimidate a man who could, with one sentence, make his big brother shuffle his feet like a kid.

Mr.. Vino was making a selection at a vending machine when Sam spoke, "And they say teachers only give homework but never have any of their own."

"Is that what they say?" Mr.. Vino retrieved a bottle of water from where it had fallen into the bottom of the machine before he turned around. "When I heard footsteps, I expected one of my colleagues. Instead, I have another visit from the FBI." He twisted the cap off of the bottle. "What can I do for you,  _Agent_  Shelley?" The emphasis he put on the word "agent" set off alarm bells in Sam's head. Mr.. Vino knew, somehow, that Sam and Dean weren't Feds. His eyes didn't leave Sam's as he sipped from his water bottle. Sam swallowed as he straightened from his lean and unfolded his arms.

.oOo.

There would be no hiding the fact someone had come through the window. The row of magazine racks that had been holding student's assignments and positioned just so in front of the window were all pushed to one side so Dean could fit through without knocking everything to the floor and giving himself away with the noise. Ears straining for the sound of footsteps to announce Mr.. Vino's return, Dean advanced to the desk and found the stack of tulpa papers on the end closest to the window. Lucky that. He snatched them up and quickly rifled through, scanning the titles of each one, muttering those titles aloud as he looked, "April; Lewellyn; Enid the Enchanted; Godzella." It sounded like a bunch of teenage girls creating more teenage girls... and a baby girl Godzilla, apparently. Wasn't this supposed to be  _Creative_  Writing? "Kinetic Cliff; that sounds familiar; Maximus Magnum," Dean snorted and grinned crookedly. He found himself wishing he had the time to read that one. "ArachiBot; Mangleclaw; The Star; Strix-ish, here we go." Dean stopped reading aloud and took in the description of the character in silence, his eyes going wider with each sentence.

.oOo.

"...but as you mentioned, I do have homework to grade. So if you will excuse me, Mary." Mr.. Vino put the cap back on his bottle and made to leave the room.

Sam was taken aback at hearing his mother's name. "What did you say?"

"Mary? And I suppose I ought call your  _partner_  'Bram,' should I not? A word of advice, young man. If you are going to use fake names, perhaps you should not use those of classic authors when speaking to an English teacher. Next time, maybe it could be, oh," his free hand waved aimlessly between them. "I don't know, rock stars."

Sam grasped desperately to regain the upper hand, vaguely wondering if he had ever had it, "You think we're using fake names." It wasn't quite a question more as just a stalling tactic at this point.

"Of course you are. I also happen to know -not think, know- that you are not Federal agents by any stretch of the imagination, nor are you affiliated with law enforcement of any kind." Mr.. Vino took another step toward the door, but Sam only had to shift his stance to show he wasn't letting the much smaller man step through the doorway.

"What makes you think that?" Stall, just stall.

"Young man, I am not only a high school teacher; I am also a writer. It is in my job description to lie, and I must say, you and your partner are profoundly bad at it. The only reason I can see for the two of you to have come to my classroom was to take that book."

.oOo.

Dean finished reading about Strix-ish and had to give his head a quick shake as though to rid himself of the mental image it had given him. "This kid is  _messed up._ "

"Dean," Yuelina's soft, deep voice floated from the window. "Movement in the sky; it is hunting. What is keeping you?"

"Coming," he replied in an equally quiet voice. As he walked back to the window, he made a quick count of the papers in hand. "Twelve, thirteen, fourteen..." he stopped. Mr.. Vino had said there were fifteen students in the class. He hastened back to find the final page centered on the desk with the pen Mr.. Vino had been using laying neatly across the top as though underlining the title. Yuelina. His eyes darted to the window and back down to the paper as he moved the pen and lifted the sheet. The final sentences seemed to jump out at him, and he read it to the exclusion of the rest.

_It will never do to keep these elegant creatures from their home. The energy produced from the orbs are life-sustaining; to be away causes Yuelina and her kind to fade and die. The only dignity of this death is that it is painless. Though painless or not, who truly wishes to perish so far from home?_


	10. Chapter 10

_The beast passed across a cloudless sky, a silent shadow, unnoticed by anyone who was not looking for it, still high above the tree tops, still scoping -without yet choosing- who its next victim would be. Yuelina was certain it had seen plenty of prey from its vantage. Perhaps there was a method to how it hunted. Certainly, when it had attacked Enid, when her sorcery could not save her, and she was being savaged alive, screaming, when the beast had looked up from its feast and fastened its eyes on Yuelina... certainly then, it had felt personal, like the beast was choosing its victims with a purpose. Yuelina had locked eyes with it for only a moment, then she was off, riding the shadows as far away from it as she could. She had not told the brothers about that death. It was not a human, after all, and Dean -she no longer called him 'the hard one' to herself- had been quite clear that he did not care if she or the other characters were killed. He had even threatened to do it himself. The beast passed again. The wide circles it was flying were getting tighter._

.oOo.

"And since you have the book you wanted, I would ask that you get out of my way that I can go see for myself why your partner is in my classroom again, and don't dare try to tell me he isn't. That is precisely why you have me cornered in here," Mr. Vino advanced on Sam. "Unless you plan on using those tree trunks you call arms to stop me, that is." He stopped with his chest inches away from Sam's upright palms, glaring up at him with all the might of a pissed off teacher.

"Alright, look," Sam kept his hands up between them as he made the snap decision to tell the truth. "The symbol on the book, on the tops of the papers, that symbol is real. You said yourself you know what it does. It's working. All of the characters your students wrote onto the pages have come to life, and some of them are killing people. I'm sure you've been hearing about the recent deaths in the news. People ripped apart, burned to death, acid. It's all coming from your students. My partner is my brother; we're hunting these characters, these monsters, so they don't hurt or kill anyone else."

As Sam talked, Mr. Vino slowly backed himself away, allowing Sam to lower his arms. "As extraordinarily unbelievable as that sounds, I do believe that's the first truthful thing you have said to me since we met." He folded one arm across his stomach and propped his opposite elbow on his wrist, thoughtfully tapping his bearded chin with one finger. "I would imagine your partner is not hunting for monsters in my classroom, so it stands to reason he's in there for the writing assignments."

"We don't know how to kill some of them," Sam admitted. "Bullets don't work. We're hoping that by reading about them, we can find their weaknesses."

"It will take much longer with one person reading than with all three of us, don't you think?"

.oOo.

Dean's eyes graced off the final word of Yuelina's description the moment the classroom door opened to admit Sam and Mr. Vino together. He had been so engrossed in reading, he hadn't heard their footsteps in the hall. Before he could open his mouth, Sam spoke, "He's going to help us."

"Well, I'm hoping one of you can help this," Dean slid Yuelina's page somewhere in the center of the stack and picked the top page up instead. "Says here 'Strix-ish' can only be subdued by placing a wreath made of arbutus around its neck. The hell is arbutus?"

"A tree," Sam replied as he stepped forward to take the paper from Dean's hand. "It grows in dry climates, though."

"Dry climates. Like..?"

"Like, not here. It's too humid. Try the Mediterranean."

"Or Arizona," Mr. Vino's voice pulled Dean's attention from his brother to the teacher.

"Come again?" Dean inquired.

"The Arizona Madrone, or strawberry tree as some people called them. They grow along the canyon trails my wife and I used to hike when we were living there. She loved them and would nearly trip over herself staring as we walked past them." Even if he was right, which he probably was, Mr. Vino's statement didn't sound very helpful.

"Oh sure, let's just hop in the car, drive about fifteen hundred miles each way, and hope this thing doesn't kill anybody in the two or more days we're gone leaf-picking."

"Or," Sam walked to the open window and leaned down. "Yuelina?"

It was now fully dark outside. There was nothing to see out the windows, only the reflection of the three men standing in the white florescent lighting of the classroom. Though she wasn't visible, her voice floated inside, "I will deliver it upon my return."

_Fade and die._  "No." Dean crossed to the window with long, hurried steps and poked his head outside, calling out her name. Yuelina was gone. He stood and turned back to Sam. "You shouldn't have sent her."

"Why not?"

Before Dean could answer, Mr. Vino cleared his throat. Both brothers turned to their attention to him, and the somber look he shared with Dean let him know that Mr. Vino had finished reading the paper about Yuelina before he stood up for his break. Mr. Vino broke eye contact and focused on Sam, "Would it not be prudent for us to read through these assignments and determine which of the characters are threats?"

"Haven't you already read them?" Sam asked. "You've been sitting in here for hours."

Mr. Vino rewarded Sam with a wry smile. "As it happens, I had only just finished grading ninth grade book reports when I took my break. I hadn't yet started on the Creative Writing character assignment."

Dean knew it to be a lie, but Sam simply nodded his acceptance of the statement before addressing him, "Alright, give me some of those so I can start reading."

Dean counted off the top four pages. "I figure you'll want to read all about Strix-ish too, so keep that one," he said as he handed the papers to his brother. He counted off the next five pages, which included Yuelina's, and kept them for himself while handing over the remaining five to Mr. Vino. The act was not lost on the perceptive teacher who very likely had noticed Dean's earlier act of stuffing one page in the center of the stack. His eyes dropped to the pages Dean held to his chest and very pointedly back up to Dean's face as he accepted the pages Dean held out to him. The three of them silently settled down to read, dividing the character sheets into two piles between them: non-threatening and deadly.

.oOo.

_Yuelina steadied herself with a hand against the most beautifully striped, smooth cliff face she had ever seen. The whole canyon was a long, gaping mouth of the same rock, the various colors of yellows, tans, browns, and reds, all muted in the fading light of dusk. She had missed the sunset in this time zone, and she could only imagine how beautiful everything had been in the glow of the sun's setting rays. Thinking on it helped her forget how fatigued she felt after riding shadows so far in her weakened state, though it hadn't strained her nearly as much as crossing that small space at the school with the two men in tow. It had been an effort to not allow them to see it had affected her, and she was fairly certain she succeeded. Traveling by herself after sunset was much easier than traveling with a passenger -or two!- in daylight._

_She could remember a time when this ability was no more difficult than walking, a time when she was strong and healthy, sustained by the humming orbs that grew organically in her world. But no, how could she possibly remember that? She had only just had life breathed into her, had never truly known any world but this one. Her own world was only an idea, one in which she had never actually been placed._

_Once her feet were firmly under her, Yuelina scanned her surroundings for foliage. There. She folded herself into the shadows to travel dozens of yards in an eyeblink. As she examined the trees, she realized this would be the difficult part, identifying the Arizona Madrone. Finding Arizona had been easy; the teacher's classroom had had a large map of their country displayed across the whole of one wall. Yuelina had been curiously examining it while not anxiously glancing up at the sky, and she had found it most interesting that though she had been written to know a different language than English, because her author had not yet taken the time to give her that language, she could fluently speak, read, and understand English._

_Fold. Another stand of trees. The teacher had mentioned the tree she was seeking also went by the name 'strawberry tree.' Strawberries, she knew, and she could only hope that meant any fruit on the trees would yes!_

_Fold. A splash of red further away lured her to a squat tree with smooth, wind-twisted limbs absolutely covered in clusters of small fruits not unlike tiny strawberries. Yuelina could appreciate why Mrs.. Vino had adored these trees on her hikes. Paper-thin bark stretched out across the limbs, cracking and peeling up to reveal grey under the reddish-pink. It almost pained her to have to remove anything from this beautiful tree, but as memories of Enid's shrieks echoed in her ears, she pushed her reluctance aside and used her sharp claws to prime branches with jagged slices before snapping them off with brute strength. She took a slow, deep breath to ready herself, then folded yet again into the shadows with the burden across her shoulders._

_Yuelina's breathing was shallow when she arrived at the small house by the quarry, not too far from where authorities had found the body of the man who had lived there before he had been attacked by the Mangleclaw. She took one step, two, and collapsed under the weight of the three branches she had harvested. As consciousness drifted from her, she heard her name being shouted and more words her tired brain wouldn't make sense of. The branches were lifted off of her and thrown to the side, and she was rolled over as the sound of running feet came closer. Cliff skidded to a halt in the dirt and knelt beside her. He was backlit by the harshness of a bare light bulb glowing on the porch of the house, but it was enough for her to know it was him._

_"Did it get you? Are you hurt?"_

_"So tired," Yuelina whispered. She reached one arm out for where she had heard the branches fall. "Get... get these to Lewellyn." Darkness overtook her._


	11. Chapter 11

_Gentle rocking roused her, and as Yuelina opened her eyes, she realized she had lost little time in her faint. She was cradled against Cliff's chest, his arms carrying her easily, as the branches of strawberry tree -arbutus, she reminded herself- floated ahead of his sure stride as he carried her into the open door of the house. Other characters from the students' writings had gathered here, most uncertain what to do with themselves in this unfamiliar world, two of whom were in the living area: a large, shaggy wolf who had introduced himself as Percy and liked to talk about philosophy when awake, but was currently curled in a furry ball, sleeping in the corner of the room; and the wood sprite, Lewellyn. Yuelina saw the girl sitting on the floor, leaning against a stained, and threadbare couch, sagging in the center and looking the worse for wear. An open book was cradled in her lap, and she seemed oblivious to all else. Yuelina could not blame her for preferring to sit on the floor instead of the filthy couch._

_"I set the wood in the center of the room," Cliff's chest vibrated against her shoulder as he spoke. The branches followed his direction and settled across the old, orange and brown throw rug on the floor. The edges were curled with age, and stains spotted the fibers. Yuelina gave Cliff's chest a pat with the pads of her fingers, careful to keep her claws off of him._

_"I am well, Cliff. Please let me stand."_

_Cliff pursed his lips, clearly in disagreement, but without argument, he lowered Yuelina's legs to the floor, offering her support until she showed she could stand unassisted. It took her saying Lewellyn's name three times before the slight figure responded, "Hmm?" Deep green eyes looked up from the book. They were narrowly spaced, as though pinching in her slightly pointed nose on a slender face. Her dark brown skin seemed to shine in the dim lighting of the single lamp she was using to illuminate the pages of her book. She looked like the smooth shell of a chestnut._

_"You work with plants, do you not?" Yuelina inquired._

_"Sure. What do you need?."_

_Yuelina pointed to the pile of branches between them, "A wreath; one large enough to fit around the neck of the beast that killed Enid. Can you make one with this?"_

_Lewellyn cocked her head and looked between Yuelina, the branches, and back again. "Of course. But why did you bring so much?"_

_"I... I thought wreaths need excessive amounts of foliage to..." Yuelina rounded her hands in front of her, making a circular motion. "To make them."_

_Lewellyn grinned. "Not for me. Let me show you." She lifted forward onto her knees, shaking back her mane of long brown and green hair to reveal her garments of growing and writhing vines, leaves, and small blue and white flowers. She looked a living plant herself. Kneeling as she was, the branches before her came almost to her chin, and though she appeared to be childlike, she had claimed to the others to be hundreds of years old. Small, brown hands reached out for the first branch, and as they watched, the branch came alive under her touch, much as the vines she wore upon her body. It bent around itself, growing, growing, sprouting new leaves, new flower buds. The buds bloomed and fell, and in their place fruits ripened and plumped as more buds blossomed._

_Yuelina wanted to be more impressed, to be captured by the wonder of watching something so beautiful, but it nagged in the back of her head how angry she was with herself for being wasteful with her energy by riding shadows with entirely more burdens than what was needed. She could feel it inside of her; she was fading, and she had to conserve what little she had left. Without turning away from what they were watching, Yuelina addressed Cliff, "You must take this wreath to the brothers."_

_"Me? It'll be faster if you do it than if I drive, you know that."_

_"I cannot." She felt Cliff stare up at her._

_"You need to stay and rest," he decided._

_"I cannot do that either," she replied, returning his gaze. "This is almost finished. I cannot stay here and hide while there is more to be done."_

_"Cannot," Cliff scoffed. "You mean will not. Listen here, if you can't even do your disappearing/reappearing act without falling over anymore, and now you're needing to send an old man like me instead, you sure as hell don't need to be off chasing that thing. It'll kill you."_

_"That is my risk to take."_

_"I could stop you. Keep you here."_

_"You could," Yuelina agreed. "I am asking you to take me with you, though." Their eyes continued to bore into each others', their contest of wills straining until Cliff finally blinked and looked down._

_"Just don't you die on me, girly," he mumbled. Yuelina placed her hand on his shoulder._

_"Thank you." She turned to Lewellyn again to find the wreath sitting prettily in the center of the rug. The other two branches had been grown into a pair of couches facing each other, wood interwoven onto itself, leaves and flowers sprouting all over. Lewellyn herself was curled against the arm of one couch, nestled in a thick bed of leaves, her long hair draped around her body, and the book once more in her hands. "And I thank you as well, Lewellyn."_

_"Be careful," the wood sprite said, looking up. "That thing scared me, Yuey. Don't let it lie to you."_

.oOo.

"That's it, then," Dean said as he placed the last of his five pages in the non-threat pile. It was Maximus Magnum. He had expected something other than a lanky, awkward teenage boy, growing up with the unfortunate situation of having a name that didn't suit him at all. Still, it had been funny. "Seems we've already met or seen the handiwork of all the baddies these kids came up with. What are you doing?"

Mr. Vino was back at his desk, hunched over Mangleclaw with a red pen in hand. He looked up at Dean's question. "I'm grading my student's work."

"No, no, no." Dean stood and snatched the paper out from under Mr. Vino's hands. "This one has already been taken care of. If the student gets this paper back in their hands to re-read it and let their creative juices start flowing again, the character might come back. We can't risk that. As soon as we finish this job, all these killer character pages are getting torched."

"And if we burn the pages of the monsters," Sam put in, "it's only fair we burn all of them."

Dean cut his eyes briefly to Sam with that statement, a twitch in his jaw. "Yeah," he said to Mr. Vino. "All of them." The expression in the blue eyes looking up at him made Dean shrug uncomfortably.

A horrified scream reached them from the still open window, followed by a woman's voice, "NOOOOO! OH MY GOD! SOMEBODY HELP MEEEE!" And more screaming.

Dean whipped his head around to Sam, and the two of them shared a look they both knew well. He dropped the paper back on the desk and pointed at Mr. Vino. "Stay here," he commanded and ran out the classroom door on Sam's heels. With the class being the last on the end, it took only a few steps for them to crash through the outside door, both brothers reaching into their waistbands to draw their guns. Gurgled screams lead them up the hill in the darkness, and as they ran, Dean willed his eyes to adjust to the darkness after being inside the brightly lit classroom. But then as he made sense of the shadows in front of him, he almost wished he couldn't see it.

The thing was massive, hulking atop the sloppy mess of what it had made of the woman, whom Dean assumed had been another teacher. The thing's feathered body was hunched over, face down, as it stood on sturdy, scaled, backwards-bent rear legs, and slashed into the remains of the woman with talons on similar forelegs. He raised his Colt in unison with Sam's Taurus, and both of them sent multiple bullets ripping through it.

Strix-ish jerked its head up and screeched at them, a horrifying blend of a barn owl and a woman's shriek. Gobbets of flesh dropped from a wicked, curved beak jutting from a flattened, heart-shaped face and smeared down onto the black-speckled white feathers which sprouted in sickening patches from the human-like breasts on its chest. It unfurled its massive wings, and Dean could feel blasts of wind coming from them as it flapped heavily and lifted its body into the air with another screech. It whirled in the air above them and disappeared over the tree line behind the school.

"Great," Dean said, scanning the sky where Strix-ish had vanished. "Now we've just pissed it off."

"Do you see it anymore?" Sam was also looking in the same direction.

"No, but you can bet your ass it's gonna be back."

"Georgetta?" Mr. Vino had silently climbed the hill behind them and was advancing on the ruin left behind by Strix-ish. Sam tried to put himself between the teacher and the carnage, but Mr. Vino wasn't having it. He poked a fingertip hard against Sam's sternum and glared up at him. "You will move." Another poke. "Now."

Sam glanced at Dean and stepped aside. Mr. Vino's shoes squelched in the blood saturating the grass as he moved around Sam. "It shouldn't have been this way for her. She has a family. The students love her." He looked back at the brothers with glassy eyes. "There were so many kids who would have given up, dropped out, if it weren't for this woman." He looked back down at her. "So many teachers who come to her for help..." His voice started to crack. "She teaches English too, you know, and damn good at it." With that, Mr. Vino took a knee next to his friend.

Dean turned away to give him a moment of privacy, which faced him toward the parking lot. Sam moved to his side to face the lot as well. Two figures backlit from the light posts were coming toward them from that direction, passing the side of the main building. The shorter of the two was holding a large wreath.

"We heard the gunshots, and we saw it leave," Cliff said as he and Yuelina joined them. He avoided looking at the two teachers on the ground behind the brothers and hefted the wreath. "I sure hope this is what you need, 'cause if bullets ain't stopping it..."

"It should," Sam said, reaching for the wreath. "Everything the students wrote on the pa-"

Before he could take the wreath, a massive claw swooped down and wrapped around Sam's outstretched arm, yanking him off the ground. A backdraft of air smashed down on the rest of them as the beating of wings lifted Strix-ish upward to take away its prey.

"SAM!" Dean bellowed after them as he stumbled to regain his footing, but he was helpless to do anything. "SAM!"


	12. Chapter 12

With each beat of its wings, Strix-ish pulled Sam higher into the sky. Being yanked up by the arm as he had been, his left shoulder felt as though it had been pulled out of socket. Pain shot through him as he dangled from the tight grip of a scaly foot tipped with talons longer than his hand.. His mind raced as he looked down. Already, he was too high to drop safely. If he struggled and fell, he had no illusions what would happen to him. But to think of it... falling to his death would be preferable to what he had seen this thing do to the teacher Mr. Vino was mourning.

He had dropped his gun when lurched off the ground; he bent his knee and used his free hand to grope at the band around his ankle which held a knife in place. His wriggling was noticed by Strix-ish. It whipped its face down to glare at him with black eyes and slash at his face with the claws of one foreleg. Sam jerked his head back, avoiding the claws, but he couldn't stop looking at the eyes above him as they... melted... into a new shape and color. The round, black orbs of an owl turned human ovoid, gaining white around the edges and blooming a vivid green in the center, even in the dark of the sky. Long eyelashes ringed them, and they took on a hard squint Sam knew well.

_"The most personal, heart-breaking touch of this Strix is her ability to transform her eyes into those of the person her victim most loves in life. Their final moments, as they are torn to pieces, are in torment as they stare up in horror, believing their murderer to be someone they once trusted completely."_

Sam dodged another slash of talons and another as desperation set in.

.oOo.

_"SAM!"_

_Yuelina watched, stricken, as Dean stumbled sideways against the press of air and called out for his brother. Cliff had been knocked to his knees, and the teacher was picking himself up from having been sprawled into the entrails of the most recent victim._

_"Where is it?" Dean demanded. "Do you see it?"_

_Yuelina had been thrown to the ground next to Cliff, and she lifted her gaze up at Dean's words. A hint of a shadow remained, rising ever skyward, a shadow of flapping wings and kicking legs. She reached for the wreath that had fallen between herself and Cliff._

_"What are you doing, girl?" Cliff put his hand on hers. She allowed herself to look at him. "You won't make it."_

_"I must try," she insisted. She looked over at Dean. His eyes were on her as well. Hard eyes, the anger erased, overwhelmed by too much pain, by fear, and still beautiful. She could see he wanted to trust her. "I can do this." Her fist curled around the wreath and pulled it away from Cliff. At the same moment, she folded herself into the shadows and rode them to the beast in the air above them._

_Landing on the back of Strix-ish, Yuelina faltered, swayed, and almost fell. The clawed fingers of one hand gripped the feathers beneath her, steadying herself. The beast screeched and turned its head around to snap at her, but she was far back enough for the beak to be ineffective. Black eyes swam with color and turned a deep, dark purple, similar to her own. Yuelina flinched away and squeezed her own eyes shut tight. "You lie!" she shouted. "Those are not your eyes! He would never harm me!"_

_The world shifted, and Yuelina opened her eyes again to find Strix-ish had banked, turning nearly sideways as it circled around back to where it had picked up Sam. Its head was tucked down, seemingly looking under itself. She was jolted as something under her moved. What was happening down there? No matter. She needed to hurry. Lifting the wreath, she leaned forward and looped it around the neck of the beast. A blood-curdling shriek rang out, and the Strix-ish plummeted to the ground._

_Yuelina blinked against the wind as they fell. She took a deep breath. Fold._

_She was below Strix-ish, gripping Sam's limp body. Blood flowed from a pair of jagged gouges raked along his face. As she examined his cuts, she felt a sense of weightlessness then a new rushing of air and realized Strix-ish had released Sam. They were plummeting downward. Yuelina closed her eyes again against the sting of the wind. She centered herself and tried to fold into the shadows._

_Flicker-flick. Nothing._

_Flick._

_Flick._

_Yuelina opened her eyes and stared down at the ever approaching ground, fear gripping her. They were not going to make it._

_Flick._

_Flick._

_Fold._

.oOo.

As he was anxiously scanning the sky, Dean's little brother suddenly appeared next to him, two feet above the ground, with Yuelina wrapped protectively around him. They thumped into the earth, and Sam gasped in a deep breath, his eyes snapping open.

"Sam!" Dean rushed to them, putting one hand on his brother's shoulder. The right side of his face was more blood than flesh. "Talk to me, Sammy."

"Did she..." Sam looked down at the pale figure laying against him. "Did she save me...?" He slowly edged his way up into a sitting position, his eyes on Yuelina's still form. Dean looked down at her too, rolling her off of Sam and onto her back.

"Yuelina?"

Her dark purple eyes flitted open. "Dean," she whispered.

"You need to get up now," he said. "It's all done."

Yuelina reached a hand up to touch Dean's cheek. She had such thick scales across her shoulders and down her arms, but the skin of her hand was much softer than Dean had expected. "It is done," she agreed. "Now everyone is safe."

"Yeah, all safe," Dean replied. "It's time to go."

"Dean... you were ready to destroy me... others like me... Why should you want to save me now?"

"I..." Dean struggled to answer. He had a reason, Heaven and Hell knew, but could he say it? "I was where you are now. Knowing I was going to die. It made me angry, ready to fight. I saw that in you. I... I understood it." Dean placed his hand on Yuelina's on his cheek. "I know what it's like to die. I know what it's like to be afraid of it."

Yuelina gave him a ghost of a smile. "I am not dying," she said. "Not truly."

Dean gripped her hand tightly.

"I live inside the imagination of my author," she continued. "She is not done with me. I may fade from this world, but I will never truly die so long as I live within her. There is a story for me, and I will live on when she writes it."

"But you won't be here."

"I do not belong here. This world is not mine; it is yours. Do what you have always done. Protect. Save."

Dean's hand trembled. "I wanted to learn from you."

Yuelina smiled weakly, "And I from you. Our two worlds have much to learn from each other. But it is time to let go."

Dean swallowed harshly and nodded. Through their conversation, Yuelina had been fading in truth, turning transparent. "Thank you. For saving Sam."

Yuelina took a final breath, "He was worth saving." With that, she was gone. Dean's hand held nothing as she faded away from him.

.oOo.

The next day found the brothers at the small house next to the quarry. The non-threatening characters had gathered there, they learned, and had even held the inside-out guy in a back room.

"We pressed his hands against his bare chest and wrapped him in duct tape," Cliff explained. "That way, he has to mind himself and be very careful with his thoughts."

"According to his author, he's immortal," Sam divulged. "The smartest thing to do is to bury him." His mind flashed back to the immortal doctor and the time Sam had tried to convince Dean it was worth the price to... He shook the rest of the thought away and flinched against the two jagged rows of stitches Dean had sewn down his face the night before. "Bury him and forget where his grave is," Sam finished.

"Is the woman still here?" Dean asked. After Yuelina had faded the night before, Dean hadn't seemed to be able to focus on anything else for a while, and Sam was still dealing with the pain of his dislocated shoulder and clawed face. It had been Mr. Vino who pointed out the woman. She had slammed to the ground further down the hill from their group, unconscious and nude except for a large wreath of arbutus encircling her body. She was covered in bullet wounds, and her frail body had just seemed so broken. Somehow, though, she was still alive.

"Yep," Cliff answered. "Amazingly enough, she's healing up. Actually woke up and started talking to us some. Still can't get a name out of her, but she seemed real grateful when Lewellyn turned that wreath into armlets for her so they don't fall off, just in case. I don't think she much liked being that monster."

"I did some research on the Strix of Greek mythology," Sam told him. "From what I found, the student did their research too. Get this, the lore says people used arbutus to ward the Strix away. The student wrote that a wreath would 'subdue' it. I guess turning her back into a human is what they meant."

Cliff nodded thoughtfully. "Guess now, all I can do is keep an eye on her and the rest." He jokingly nudged his elbow at Dean. Arm in a sling, Sam was glad he wasn't the one being nudged. "Unless you plan on 'subduing' all of us," he said with a laugh.

Sam caught Dean's eye and saw the guilt before he was able to hid it. "Nah, we'll let you off the hook. This time." He shared a grin with Cliff, and the older man chuckled again.

The three men exchanged handshakes and pleasantries, and the brothers walked to the Impala where it sat, windows down, in the shade of a large tree.

.oOo.

They had called the local police before leaving the school the night before, to come deal with Mr. Vino and his teacher friend, Georgetta. After following Cliff as he drove the woman to the little house and making sure they were settled in well, Dean and Sam had made one more stop before heading back to the hotel. They went back to the park where they had first met Yuelina.

Dean lifted the gear stick into Park and turned the key in the ignition to shut off the engine. Staring out the windshield, he asked, "You ready?"

Sam nodded, also not looking at his brother. He couldn't move well, pain shooting down his face and radiating from his shoulder. They got out of the car, Sam moving more slowly than Dean. He opened the back door on his side and reached into his laptop bag to withdraw the character assignments and tulpa book. They joined together in the parking lot, away from the dry grass of the park, and Dean pulled out a book of matches. "Book first," he said.

Sam dutifully held out the book with his good arm and kept it steady while Dean lit the matches in a flare of flames and put it to the old pages. Once it caught well, Sam set it on the ground at their feet to allow the fire to consume it. He reached forward with the assignments, ready to drop the whole pile at once, but Dean's hand on his arm stopped him, "One at a time."

Cutting a curious glance at his brother, Sam handed the pages to him, "Here." Dean took them, and Sam watched silently as his big brother took one page at a time from the stack, read the title, and fed it to the flames. He held the last page in his hands longer than the rest. Sam thought Dean was reading the whole thing. Then, he dropped that one as well. Before the fire consumed it, Sam caught a glimpse of the capital Y in the title.

.oOo.

As they climbed into the car after saying goodbye to Cliff, Dean looked over at Sam. "Y'know, with all this excitement, I almost forgot how damn hot it is here." He swiped a hand across his sweating brow before starting the car and turning on the air conditioner. Sam smirked as Dean continued, "Tell you what. Let's not ever come to central Alabama again. Deal?"

Sam let out a laugh, "I guess that'll depend on the monsters."

"Yeah." Dean started driving. "Speaking of monsters. Does it feel like we missed something?"

.oOo.

_Mobile, Alabama_

"Mama, Mama!" A small girl of about eight years ran across the beach to a woman laying on a beach chair in the shade of an umbrella. The woman lifted up her head and blinked at her daughter through her wide sunglasses.

"What is it Taylor?"

"Mama, I seen a little baby pink dinosaur!"

"Oh, you mean a water float?" The woman let her gaze drift across the other beach-goers as they played in the waves of the ocean, looking for the toy.

"No, Mama! I mean a REAL one! It jus' walked 'cross the sand and went right on into the water," the girl pointed at the ocean.

"Come on, then," the woman lifted herself from the chair. "Sounds like you've had too much sun. Let's go on back to the hotel for now."

"No, Mama! I swear! I seen it!"

The woman gathered their belongings and shook her head as the girl continued to insist. A real dinosaur. A real,  _pink_  dinosaur. Sure it was.


End file.
